


Shadows

by wheatear



Series: What Jessica Did [3]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Coercion, Dubious Consent, F/M, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mind Control, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicidal Thoughts, Teaming up with the enemy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, self-destructive behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-05-12 15:33:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 47,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19231981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheatear/pseuds/wheatear
Summary: She loved him once. It was messed up and they were messed up, but she felt something for him. One year after Kilgrave, Jessica must face her past, her guilt, and an old enemy who comes asking for help.





	1. hell is empty and the devil is here

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a sequel to "Choices", an AU canon divergence that diverged at the point when Jessica first met Kilgrave and was immune to his mind control from the beginning. If "Choices" is the backstory for Jessica and Kilgrave, then you could consider this story my alternate version of Season 1. Like in canon, it picks up a year after the end of their relationship when Kilgrave resurfaces. The plot, however, is very different. If you want to see a version of Jessica/Kilgrave where Jessica struggles with her feelings for Kilgrave as much as she struggles with her own guilt and trauma, then stick around.
> 
> As before, the tags give a general sense of the themes that are covered but please consider this a blanket warning for dark and potentially disturbing content.

Assholes would be assholes. That didn’t surprise her. The sales manager had hired her to find out whether his wife had been cheating on him while he was off on his business trips and when it turned out that she had – Jessica showed him the pictures – he got mad at _her_. For doing her job.

She shoved him and his pictures through the door. Broke the glass pane. Worth it.

She got her money from the asshole client before he stumbled off muttering curses under his breath. That left the door. She took a moment to consider the pile of broken glass on the floor and decided it could wait. Not like she was expecting anyone.

Jessica threw on her jacket and headed out.

The sky was overcast, the light fading. She hunched her shoulders and walked with her head down. Her stomach gnawed. It wasn’t hunger. It was more like the itch of a splinter trapped beneath a fingernail. Irritating, easily ignored, but if she didn’t do anything then the irritation would build up and drive her mad. She had to move; she had to get some air.

She took pictures of people boning and her ungrateful clients yelled at her for it.

Why had she chosen this career again?

Jessica blew out her cheeks, looking up to realise that her feet had taken her down a familiar path. She stopped outside a bar. Hands in pockets, she squinted through the window at the proprietor, Luke, in conversation with one of the patrons. She shouldn’t bother him. No matter how badly she wanted another drink, this was a bad place to do it.

But she lingered too long. Luke glanced up – and saw her. His eyebrows raised fractionally, then he gave a small nod, inviting her in. Dammit. She thought about walking off, but Luke’s eyes were still on her. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t seen him. He was one of the few good guys she’d met in her life. Trustworthy, dependable. His wife was a lucky woman.

She shrugged and walked in, taking a seat at the counter without saying anything.

“Jessica Jones,” Luke greeted her. “Looking for another job?”

“Looking for booze. Whiskey, neat.”

While he got the drink for her, the backroom door opened and a woman stepped out. Luke’s wife, Reva. She was poised, compassionate, and even-tempered. They were a good match. Jessica had met her only once, and her overwhelming impression had been to feel like even more of a disaster than she already did in comparison to Reva’s aura of calm.

Reva tapped her husband’s shoulder. “Honey, I need you to fetch up the next barrel.”

Luke nodded. “In a sec.”

Then Reva noticed who Luke was serving, and blinked. “Jessica?”

“Hi, Reva.” She knocked back the whiskey shot in one hit.  

“Long time no see. What brings you back to our little corner of the world?”

“I remembered you have good booze.” She cracked a smile. “Another, please.”

Luke took her empty shot glass, but gave her a concerned look. “You okay, Jones?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked her that. Back when she used to work for him it had been one of the things she’d appreciated about him as a boss. He cared about his people. Then again, she’d been in such an awful state at the time that the merest suggestion of kindness from another human being had been liable to make her tear up.

Jessica shrugged. “I’m fine. Long day.”

“Are you still with that, what’s his name, Kilgrave?”

The name jolted through her veins. She hadn’t heard it in so long. Not spoken aloud.

“Are you asking if she’s single?” Reva asked, mock-jealous, but Luke didn’t laugh.

He’d always taken Kilgrave seriously, she thought. Even though he’d never known what was really going on.

“Nope,” she said, downing her second shot. “He’s long gone.”

She didn’t say whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. She hoped Luke would read it in her eyes. It was a good thing. She didn’t miss him. She might be alone and drowning her sorrows, but she was doing it on her own terms. Kilgrave was in the past.

“So what are you doing nowadays, Jessica?” Reva asked.

“I’m a P.I. Opened my own business, Alias Investigations. If Luke’s got secrets, I’ll dig ‘em up for you. For a price.”

She meant it as a joke, but Reva’s mouth tightened and her fingers dug into her husband’s shoulder. Luke remained stolid, but he did share a glance with his wife. Huh. If she didn’t know better, she’d say they did have something to hide. The atmosphere became suddenly awkward.

“Well, if I do, I’ll give you a call,” said Reva. “It was nice seeing you again, Jessica.”

She nudged Luke, who slid over Jessica’s third drink of the evening before nodding. “I’m on it.”

He disappeared into the backroom and the awkward moment dissipated, Jessica staring down at her glass while Reva moved on to serve another customer. She hadn’t come here to reminisce about old times or visit old acquaintances. No, she’d come here to get wasted and get laid, and she was well on the way to doing the former.

As for the latter…

She glanced around at the other patrons in the bar. They were mostly grizzled old men, too caught up in their own reminiscing about old times to notice her. Or if they did, she wasn’t interested. She wasn’t that drunk yet.

But she didn’t need to wait long. Half an hour later, a group of men came in to play pool, all of them drunk and in high spirits, and all of them obnoxious. Perfect.

“Hey, assholes,” said Jessica loudly. “Ten bucks says I can beat any of you in a game.”

The men laughed. She had no shortage of volunteers to take up her bet. One by one they lost as the drinks piled up and Jessica collected her winnings. She was forty bucks up when they finally brought in what she assumed was their best player, or the most dominant guy anyway, a tall lanky stranger with a shaved head, a silver earring and a slow, lazy stride that matched his slow, lazy grin. He was called Mick or Mike. She didn’t quite catch it and didn’t care to ask. He moved with confidence, unfazed by the hoots and cheers of his friends.

Jessica had played pool many times during her college years. They were neck-and-neck until they were both trying to pot the black and Mick-or-Mike got the winning shot. He got the biggest cheer of all.

“So at least one of you isn’t a loser.” She handed over the cash. “Ten whole bucks. What are you gonna do with it?”

He twirled the bill between his fingers, glancing up at her. “How about I buy you a drink?”

He bought her a drink. Soon after, she took his hand and weaved through the crowd around the pool table, heading for the back. He saw where she was going and stopped.

“Hey. That’s the ladies’ room. I can’t go in there.”

“Don’t be a pussy.” She rolled her eyes. “Come in or not, I don’t care. Guess I’ll find someone else.”

She went in, the door swinging behind her. He followed. She grabbed him by the collar and shoved him into the bathroom stall. Somewhere in the midst of her drunken haze, it occurred to her that this was the same bathroom stall that Kilgrave had fucked her in once. He’d shoved her up against the wall – she pinned the stranger too – and whispered things into her ear while they fumbled with zips and belts.

“ _Jessica_ …”

She undid the guy’s fly and he drawled out something stupid like “Baby” or “Babe”. His voice was jarring, not the one in her head. She covered his mouth with her hand.

“Don’t talk.”

He started to struggle. She kept her hand clamped over his mouth and his dick had gone limp, what was the point of that, she wanted to fuck him, to hurt him, to feel him inside her–

She saw the whites of his eyes.

*

Jessica woke up sweating.

Her hair was damp. Her heart hammered. She lay there for a few seconds until her blood simmered down and she felt able to think.

Another nightmare. Four months had passed since that night and she was still dreaming about it. She closed her eyes, took deep breaths.

_Birch Street. Main Street. Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane._

She rolled over and picked up her phone. No messages. She didn’t need to get up for another hour.

Too late. She dragged herself out of bed, into the shower and out again, into her well-worn jeans and the same top she’d worn yesterday. It smelled fine. She poured herself a morning whiskey. She sat down at her desk and opened her laptop to review her pending cases.

This was it, the life of Jessica Jones.

She’d invoiced the last bill for Jeri Hogarth, the lawyer who was her best client, but the pay check hadn’t come through. Another payment had come through from a woman who’d suspected her husband of having an affair. The usual story. It was all true. That case was over too.

She had no pending cases.

She ran a hand through her hair and wondered if it was time to pay Hogarth another visit. She didn’t like to look desperate, but…

There was a knock at the door.

Jessica looked up. The sound was so soft she almost thought she’d imagined it, but no, there was a silhouette hovering behind the recently-repaired glass. A woman, judging by the figure. Hair done up in a flyaway bun.

Jessica stood up, scraping her chair back, and went over to answer. She didn’t often get visitors. Almost never, in fact.

“Hi.” Her visitor licked her lips, her voice high and breathy. “Jessica Jones? Alias Investigations?”

“Yeah.”

The sign on the glass said so. The woman glanced at it, managing to look relieved and nervous all at once. She was small, with plump cheeks and lips and round glasses, her body wrapped up in a long cardigan. The overall effect was not unlike an owl.

“I’m Deborah. Deborah Hargreaves. I, um, I hoped we could talk?”

Lost cat, Jessica guessed. She looked like the type. It was insane the amount of money people were willing to spend to find their lost pets.

“Come in,” she said, and beckoned Deborah to take a seat.

“I’m… I’m here about my mother,” said Deborah, immediately proving her wrong. “She’s been missing for nearly two weeks and the police won’t do anything, I don’t know what to do…”

Maybe this was more interesting than she had anticipated. Jessica opened her notebook. She preferred to scribble on paper. Less distracting than a laptop.

“Okay,” she said. “Start from the beginning.”

*

Here was the story:

Deborah’s mother was Doctor Mallory Hargreaves, a psychiatrist specialising in working with felons. She worked at Birch Psychiatric Hospital, a ward for the mentally ill. Doctor Hargreaves was divorced and lived alone; the hospital had called Deborah as the next of kin when Hargreaves hadn’t reported in to work. Deborah had tried calling her mother and then gone over to her house, but Hargreaves was nowhere to be found. She had vanished.

And the police?

Deborah pushed her glasses over the bridge of her nose. “They say they’re looking but they haven’t found anything. I just… I don’t know, I feel like they’re blowing me off. I took some time off to come here and talk to them but the new semester starts next week and I have to get back to teaching.”

Deborah taught biology at the University of Massachusetts. She had only recently completed her PhD.

“When was the last time anyone saw your mom? Was it at work?”

Deborah nodded. “She left work for the day like she normally does and the next day she didn’t turn up. Maybe you can talk to them. Do you think you could help me?”

A missing person case. She’d never done one of those before.

Jessica paused. “You know she could be dead. Are you prepared for that?”

People got mad at her over some pictures. She didn’t want to be blamed for finding a dead body.

Deborah flinched at the word. “I just want to find my mom.”

There was a quiet hurt in her voice. Reading between the lines, Jessica had guessed that Deborah and her mother weren’t that close, didn’t keep in regular contact. But she was still her mother, and the closest person that Doctor Hargreaves had left.

“Okay,” said Jessica. “I’ll take it on.”

“Thank you!”

Hope lit up the other woman’s face. God, she hoped she wasn’t about to disappoint her. She’d solved all her cases so far, a fact that she was proud of, but solving them often meant delivering bad news.

Still, she didn’t have anything else to do. So she explained to Deborah how it all worked, that she charged hourly including expenses, and drew up a standard contract. While she did that, another thought occurred to her.

“How did you find out about me?”

Jessica had gotten by so far with an almost stubborn refusal to promote her services. She mainly relied on work from Hogarth, the glowing recommendations and publicity she’d gotten from her friend Trish when they’d still been talking, and after that pure word-of-mouth.

“Oh.” Deborah flushed and fiddled with a loose strand on her cardigan. “I didn’t really have time to do much research, I just searched online. Private investigators in Manhattan.”

“Huh.”

She very much doubted she was at the top of a search result like that, especially if Deborah hadn’t had time to do her research.

“What?” Deborah asked, wide-eyed.

“Nothing.” She held out her card. “I’ll be in touch.”

*

First things first: contact Doctor Hargreaves’ employer. She called them. Amazing how much detective work could be done from her own bedroom with a Chinese takeaway and a cell phone. She scooped up noodles with a fork.

“Hi, can I speak to Doctor Mallory Hargreaves?”

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“Doctor Mallory Hargreaves. Could you put me through to her? I’m calling from Princeton University and I wanted to check in with her on her availability for her keynote speech.”

“Um, we don’t have a Doctor Hargreaves here. Are you sure you have the right number?”

Irritation prickled her skin. “This is the number she gave me. Can you check again?”

“We definitely don’t have anyone by that name working here, ma’am.”

The receptionist or whoever it was sounded increasingly apologetic. This was not how she had expected the conversation to go.

Jessica frowned. “Did a Doctor Mallory Hargreaves ever work here? Maybe I need to update my records.”

“I don’t have anything in the system, ma’am, I’m sorry. Sorry I couldn’t help.”

Fine. She said goodbye and then nearly dislodged her noodles as she lay back, frowning. Her bright idea had been to ask for Doctor Hargreaves in order to get the name of a superior or colleague that she could talk to instead. The hospital’s website hadn’t been forthcoming about who worked there or their contact details. Once she had a name, she could visit and pretend that she had an appointment. She figured it was the easiest way to get into a place like that which was bound to have tight security.

So much for that plan. Doctor Hargreaves had never even worked there? What was going on? Had she talked to a clueless receptionist, or… had someone wiped Hargreaves’ records? Had the receptionist lied? Why?

She might have lost her best lead. Only one way to find out.

*

“Look,” said Jessica, “my client thinks she has a stalker. Check your security footage. I just want to know if this woman was here.”

She showed the security guard a picture of Doctor Hargreaves that had been kindly provided by her daughter. The guard showed no signs of recognition. Nor had the other half dozen people she’d talked to on her way into the hospital, including several orderlies and nurses.    

The guard was reluctant. She wasn’t a police officer; she had no authority. The best she could do was convince him to check himself and report back to her. He wouldn’t let her view the footage. Patient confidentiality or whatever.

Sighing, she waited outside in the corridor as requested, scrolling through the pictures of Mallory Hargreaves on her phone. Hargreaves was a handsome woman, probably in her late forties or early fifties, with a hawkish nose, thick dark hair and deep laughter lines around her mouth. She had a distinctive profile. In every photo she wore large brightly coloured earrings.

A patient shuffled down the hallway in stripy pyjamas, mumbling to himself while he stared at the floor. Jessica ignored him. She’d already tried asking around and come up with nothing.

“Jessica Jones.”

A croaky, whispery voice. The man’s hand settled on her shoulder and she flinched, shaking him off.

“What?”

He’d said her name. How did he know her name? She didn’t know him. She hadn’t given her real name to the staff.

The man’s eyes were pale blue and staring. “How do you sleep at night after what you’ve done?”

She froze, her back against the wall. It felt as if cold water had been sluiced down her spine.  

The man continued to stare. His sleeves were too short, bony wrists sticking out.

Jessica swallowed. “Who’re you?”

He didn’t answer. After several agonising seconds, he shook his head and shuffled away, dragging his feet on the floor. She stared after him and realised that her heart was beating horribly fast.

What the hell?

The office door opened with a sharp click and Jessica jumped half out of her skin. The security guard gave her a funny look.

Nothing, he said. He’d found nothing. Hargreaves hadn’t entered or left the building that day.

In other circumstances she might have been tempted to demand a second look, to search through more of the footage or even break in later herself, but she was too spooked.

She got out of there as fast as she could.

*

Maybe it was him. Maybe it wasn’t. She’d had moments like this before, strange coincidences, conversations that triggered her paranoia. It never amounted to anything.

She drank a bottle of whiskey and looked around at her apartment, wondering whether to clean it. When Trish was stressed, she’d go on a cleaning spree. Everything had to be in its place, not a speck of dirt or dust to tarnish her perfect life.

Jessica’s coping mechanisms weren’t half as productive. She abandoned the empty bottle and shuffled into her bedroom, not bothering to turn on the light. She flopped down on her bed and the alcohol sloshed around her stomach. She burped.

The darkness was warm and still around her. In the dark there were secrets. Possibilities. No one could see what she did here, alone. No one knew her true thoughts.

She let the dread settle over her like a comfort blanket. He was here. He was watching. He didn’t touch her but his gaze was penetrating enough. It burned through her.

As always, the aftermath was followed by a wave of disgust and shame. She buried her head into the pillow, remembering the man’s words. How could she sleep? Hell, how could she stand to walk around in the daylight when there was so much rotten inside her?  

She was supposed to be a better person without him. She was supposed to do better.

No one knew.

*

She woke up with the sheets tangled around her, cursed, rolled over, and fell out of bed.

Banging at the door. “Jessica! Jessica Jones!”

For fuck’s sake. She groaned, getting up. She’d slept in her jeans so that was fine. Jessica dragged herself over to open the door, and her heart leapt into her mouth.

A cop.

She swallowed, mouth dry. Oh, God. They’d caught her. They’d finally caught her. She’d been living like a fraud all this time, every bad thing she’d done a wound that she carried, the most recent still raw, open, bleeding, and they were going to take her away and lock her up forever–

The officer cleared his throat. “Ms Jones?”

He was blond, square-jawed, dumb but tough. Uniform, gun at his hip. The real deal.

Her feet were locked to the floor. She could make a run for it. Jump out the window; he’d never see that coming. She could punch him, knock him out cold.

_Kill him, eh? Wouldn’t be the first time._

Jessica licked her lips. “Yeah?”

“Officer Simpson.” He held out his ID badge, which she barely registered. “I need to talk to you about an incident that happened ten days ago.”

She let him in. She was shaking and wrapped her arms around herself to hold still.

He looked around as he entered, hand casually resting on his hip, and she had the sudden crazy thought that he was being controlled, he was a puppet sent by Kilgrave to collect her–

She had that thought every week.

_Come with me, Jessica. Why won’t you come and see me?_

Simpson took off his cap. “Um, you might want to sit down.”

“I’m fine.”

She was nearer the door. Exit behind her. An escape route.

He leaned against the desk, awkward for a moment but then his expression turned grave. “I don’t like to be the one to break bad news…”

Oh God, was it Trish? Had something happened to Trish?

“There’s… a prisoner,” said Simpson slowly, and this was killing her. “At a place called the Raft, it’s a maximum security–”

“I know what it is,” she interrupted him. “It’s him, isn’t it? Kilgrave?”

Her heart raced. She felt like she was whiting out, all the colour draining from her until she was a bag of nothing but bones and jelly.

Simpson nodded. “He escaped ten days ago. We think he’s somewhere in the city.”

Her breath caught.

Oh–

Oh, fuck.


	2. you get what you wish for

“I know you were one of his victims,” said Simpson and she looked away, repressing a snort. “We have reason to believe he may come after you. We can offer you protection.”

Protection…

So he was here to help her. Or…

She looked at him, arms tightly folded. “Who’s ‘we’? How do I know you’re not working for him?”

Simpson nodded. “Right, the mind control. We were worried he might have gotten to you too. Is there anything you can tell us about where he might be?”

Again with the ‘us’. “No,” she said. “No, this is not my problem. This is your problem. He’s supposed to be on the Raft. It was supposed to be inescapable.”

There was no escape from hell. She’d thought the Raft was hell but it wasn’t. Her own head was.

“We’ll catch him,” said Simpson. “But until we do, you may be at risk. Come with me and we can put you on a witness protection–”

“No!” Panic clawed at her. She remembered the reality of it now, all those same feelings flooding back. The paranoia. The fear. With Kilgrave free, she couldn’t trust anyone. She’d imagined it happening and it was happening. It was her fault. “I don’t want your help. Tell me what you’re doing to catch him.”

“We’re doing everything we can. I can let you know as soon as he’s securely detained.”

Jesus Christ. Did he mean that to sound reassuring? It was vague as hell. She started pacing around, that restless itch crawling out of her skin again.

“Ten days. He’s been out for ten days. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Simpson cleared his throat, his eyes following her around the room. “He killed several people during his escape. My department just got put on the case. I guess it took a while to regroup and trace him back to the city.”

“Are you even sure he’s here?”

“The case notes I have suggest that he’s obsessed with you. We had a report of a man who drove his vehicle off Roosevelt Island Bridge. He didn’t make it. Could be a coincidence, but…”

“It could be him,” she whispered.

Kilgrave had done things like that before to cover his tracks. She could easily imagine him compelling a driver to off himself after he’d been taken wherever he needed to go.  

“I’ll ask again. Is there anything you can tell us? Anything that might help us find him?”

A pause. Jessica stopped her pacing and looked at him. He looked serious, jaw set, nothing but sincerity in his eyes. Kilgrave might be controlling him. But on the off-chance that he wasn’t… if this was real, then…

“He likes fancy hotels,” she said finally. “He doesn’t go anywhere that isn’t up to his rich prick standards. He likes wearing purple? I don’t know.”

“Okay,” said Simpson. “Are you sure you don’t want to come to the station? I don’t want to leave you here on your own.”

_No, I bet he doesn’t. Look at him. Steroids all over that one._

She blinked. “I’ll go somewhere myself. It’s safer for both of us if you don’t know where.”

“All right,” Simpson relented. “But if you change your mind… call me.”

He stepped forward and handed over a card, which she took. Then he tipped his hat, said goodbye and departed. Jessica stood still for a moment, her head whirling. She looked at the card.

Will Simpson, it said. It had a number scribbled on it, and a Manhattan address. Not the police station.

Was he really a police officer?

She didn’t know. She didn’t know. Kilgrave was back – was he back? He was back and that meant she couldn’t trust anyone or anything, she was on her own and her breaths were coming in quick shallow pants, her shoulders so tense they ached, and as she stumbled over to the kitchen the world spun around her in a dizzying blur–

Kilgrave.

He was coming for her.

Maybe he’d already found her.

She had to leave.

*

Escaping from Kilgrave meant two things. It meant getting away herself. And it meant protecting someone else. The one person she cared about most in the world, the one person he could get to and she would do anything to save, the one person she would surrender herself for, _had_ surrendered herself for–

She got in a cab, scanning the streets with a nervous eye as they set off, and made a call that went straight to voicemail.

Jessica cursed under her breath. Fine. She told the cab driver to head to the apartment. Trish’s apartment. She hadn’t visited in months. Patricia Walker, ex-child star and talk show host, was her adoptive sister and best friend and the only person in the world who knew the full story of what had happened with Kilgrave. They’d spent the better part of their teenage and college years together and Jessica had been her roommate for a while too back when she couldn’t afford her own place. Trish had always looked out for her.

That was why she’d stepped away. And it was why she was here now.

“Pack your bags,” she said without preamble when Trish let her in. “You need to come with me.”

“What?”

Trish looked tired, the shadows under her eyes darker than when Jessica had last seen her. And confused, her brow creasing, folding her arms while Jessica tried to find the right words.

Jessica lifted her chin and took a deep breath. “He’s back.”

Trish’s eyes widened. “You mean…?”

She nodded.

It felt surreal, saying this after so long. It had been over a year since Kilgrave’s imprisonment. They’d made a sort of unofficial pact not to talk about it. She’d had enough of talking, of working through her feelings or whatever bullshit. But here she was, standing in Trish’s lounge, the shadow of his influence looming over them like an oncoming storm.

“No.” Trish shook her head. “No, he can’t be. He’s in prison.”

“He got out.”

“He’s in the Raft; he can’t get out.”

“It’s Kilgrave, he controls minds! He got out.”

There was a long pause. Trish looked at her, licking her lips. “Are you still having nightmares? Flashbacks?”

_Is it all in your head, Jessica? You never told her about that, did you? Me in your head._

“It’s not that–”

“If this is your PTSD…”

“It’s not my goddamn PTSD! A cop knocked at my door today. He told me: Kilgrave’s back. He’s coming for me.”

Trish swallowed, stepping back to sink down on the couch. She looked as shaky as Jessica felt. “Oh my God.”

Silently, Jessica handed over the card that Simpson had given her, sitting down next to her. Trish frowned, turning it over.

“This is from the police? It doesn’t look like it.”

She told Trish the story. It didn’t take long. By the end of it, Trish had handed back the card and was looking thoughtful, staring at her hands clasped in her lap.

“So the police are dealing with it? Are you going to help?”

“No. You don’t understand – I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. The people who put him in prison, they failed. He could have them all under his control.”

“How do you know?” Trish looked up at her. “It’s easy to assume the worst, but he’s not invincible.”

“No, but he is determined. There’s something else…”

She told Trish about the patient in the hospital, the one who had addressed her by name. Trish let out a long, shaky breath.

“Yeah. That sounds like him. What can we do?”

“We are not going to do anything,” said Jessica firmly. “I am. You know the deal. I’m the only one he can’t control. I can’t go through what happened last time, Trish, I can’t see you get hurt.”

Last time Kilgrave had threatened and controlled Trish to make Jessica do what he wanted. He’d kidnapped Trish and twice almost killed her, once by Jessica’s hand. The memory of her friend beaten and bloody sprang fresh in her mind, her foot connecting with Trish’s ribs, Trish begging her to stop…  

Trish shook her head. “Don’t say that. I want to help.”

“He’ll use you to get to me. You know that. Don’t give him what he wants.”

Trish was silent for a long moment. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

Yeah. And for all she knew, Kilgrave had already gotten to Trish. He’d been out for ten days, which was plenty of time to find out where Trish lived and to ambush her, no matter how good her security was.  

Finally, Trish looked up at her, wiping her eyes. “What do you want me to do?”

“Go on vacation,” she said at once. “A long vacation. Pack your bags and leave right now, tell the media you’re going to rehab if it gets them off your back, I don’t care. Just go somewhere far away where neither of us can find you.”

“Just… leave? Leave you to face him on your own?”

“I don’t know how else to stop him, Trish. I don’t know how to stop him and save you. If he gets hold of you…”

Trish’s mouth thinned. She was unhappy, as Jessica had expected. Maybe she was thinking of how it had gone last time when Jessica had disappeared with Kilgrave, out of her reach. She’d needed Trish to save her back then. She hadn’t been able to get out on her own. But this time was different. This time she knew what Kilgrave was capable of.

“Please,” she said. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But I need you to do this.”

Trish swallowed. “I still have nightmares too, you know. I thought they’d stop, but… You know how I get through it?”

Jessica said nothing. She was in no position to tell anyone how to get through this.

“I tell myself that I’ll never let it happen again.”

“Then go. Get out while you still can.”

They looked at each other, Jessica praying that the urgency in her voice came through. Trish had to get it. She had to understand.

“Okay,” said Trish. “But there’s one thing I have to know.”

“What?”

“Why did you ghost me?” The pain in Trish’s eyes was too much. She looked away. “I know it wasn’t Kilgrave. I know you needed your own space, but we still talked. Why did you cut me off?”

Her heart was pounding. She licked her lips. “I’m sorry. But you need to go.”

“So you come to see me for the first time in months and all I hear is that I have to leave?”

That hurt. That cut to the bone.

Jessica stood up. “You know why you have to leave. I’ll stay in touch, okay? Just get the hell out.”

“Fine.” Trish stood up too, folding her arms. “You know, sometimes you make it hard to love you. We should be fighting him together.”

It didn’t matter that Trish was angry with her. She could cope with that. What she couldn’t cope with was Trish smiling his smile, being hurt, or dead.

She watched Trish pack her bags.

Twelve hours: that was Kilgrave’s time limit. That was how long it took for his control to wear off. She escorted Trish out and made sure that she got to the airport, only letting her go once time was up. She didn’t want to know where Trish was going.

She only hoped that she wasn’t too late.

*

The next morning Jessica caught a cab back into the city. She’d slept at the airport, huddled on one of the seats with her jacket and her bag, as if she’d missed a flight. She was tired, cranky and sweaty.

It was in this condition that Deborah let her into her mother’s house. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, dumping her bag on the counter and looking around.

The house was too big for one person. The kitchen had a breakfast bar and an adjacent dining table that could seat six people, but most of the surfaces were empty. There was a cactus on the windowsill, which didn’t give her much indication of whether it had been longer than ten days since Doctor Hargreaves had last been here, and a couple of unopened letters Deborah showed her from the past few days, which helped a little.

“I think maybe you left it a little late,” said Deborah, looking apologetic. “I have to go in the next half hour to catch my flight, so…”

She’d had a message from Deborah that she was flying back to Boston. Apparently her teaching duties couldn’t wait.

“Oh, it’s no problem. Give me your spare keys. I’ll mind the house for you.”

“Oh.”

She seemed too surprised to protest. Jessica shrugged, making herself at home. She dumped her jacket on the counter too and started making coffee.

“You want some?”

“I’m okay,” said Deborah, watching her helplessly. “Um, did you find anything at the ward?”

“Yeah, about that. Your mom never worked at Birch Psych Hospital. I went there myself. No one recognised her. She isn’t in any of their records.”

“Oh. I… I don’t understand.”

“Something’s up with that. Either the staff lied or the police lied or your mom lied.” Jessica paused. Or Deborah was lying. She hadn’t considered that particular possibility. “Any ideas?”

“I don’t know.” Deborah picked at her sleeve again. “They called me, they definitely called me, but I…”

“What?”

The kettle was starting to boil. Jessica tipped coffee beans into her mug. Truth be told, she’d rather have raided the cupboards for something stronger, but she thought that might be a little too much for Deborah’s nerves.

“I… I mean, they didn’t say who they were, I just assumed.”

“Who did you speak to? What exactly did they say?”

“A man. He just said… something like your mom didn’t come into work today and we haven’t heard from her so we wanted to check in…”

“Did you get his name?”

“No.” Deborah shook her head. “I panicked. I was so worried about my mom, I didn’t think…”

“Was he British?”

“No, Brooklyn, I think… Do you have a suspect?”

Jessica poured herself a black coffee and took a sip, scalding her tongue. “I’m working on it. Look, go home. I’ll find your mom. I promise.”

“You’re going to stay here?”

“For a couple of days. If that’s okay.”

She’d guessed correctly that Deborah would accept the situation. She wanted to go home. In the meantime, Jessica didn’t have a safe place to stay so this situation was convenient for both of them. Tonight she’d sleep in the bed of a woman who might well be dead. Funny, that. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Deborah said goodbye, leaving Jessica the spare keys. She had the house to herself.

And so the search began.

*

She was thorough about it. She worked through each room methodically, going through every drawer, every cupboard, every nook and cranny. She learned far more about Doctor Mallory Hargreaves in those next few hours than she probably ever needed to know.

The woman had great taste in jacket-and-skirt suit combinations and she liked a high heel. She liked bold jewellery and leopard print scarves. She kept pictures of her ex-husband and children – there was a second child, a boy called Aaron – in a shoebox under her bed, although the only family pictures displayed prominently around the house were those of the children. Graduation pictures of both Aaron and Deborah took pride of place above the mantelpiece. There were no pictures of them beyond that; it was as if they’d frozen in time at twenty-one. She had a stash of knitting magazines, and evidence of that hobby displayed in numerous scarves, hats, blankets, drapes, throws and tea cosies. She kept a collection of blues records and had pictures of Elmore James and the Beatles in her wardrobe. Her well-stocked bookshelves reflected her knitting and musical passions, as well as a range of historical and romantic fiction, biographies, and books relating to her profession: mental and spiritual health, psychiatry, psychology and criminology.

Mallory Hargreaves might well have been an interesting woman to meet, but none of that was helping her.

Then she searched the study.

It was a spare bedroom and still had a bed in it; Jessica guessed that it had belonged to one of the children back in the day, before Hargreaves had converted it into an office. A filing cabinet underneath the desk was locked. She couldn’t find a key.

No problem. She broke the lock, forcing it open, and pulled out a stack of files. Bills. Legal documents. Divorce papers. So far, so mundane. She went through the stack anyway, just in case. The divorce papers were heavy. Months of arguing and legal battles before it had finally gone through. Then, at the back of the binder she found a plain brown folder marked confidential. Jessica opened it. Inside was a confirmation of employment letter and a contract. She read the name in the top corner and her stomach plummeted.

IGH.

It was the name of the company that was responsible for her gifts, or so she suspected. At age fourteen Jessica had been in a car crash. Her entire family – her mom, dad, and brother – had perished in the accident, but Jessica had survived. She had woken up in the hospital two weeks later with no memory of what had happened, before being adopted by the Walker family and discovering her powers. Her adoptive mother, Dorothy Walker, had kept the papers relating to Jessica’s medical bills. Jessica had them. They were paid for by IGH.

Whoever IGH were, they were responsible for that two-week gap in her memory.

She’d looked up IGH before and had found nothing. She’d never encountered them, although Kilgrave had once tried to trick her into thinking that she had. Never tried to investigate her past – what would be the point? It was already done.

But here IGH was, in black and white. She scanned the letter.

It was an employment offer to work at a high security prison, codename “The Raft”. Another name that set the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end, this time for very different reasons.

She’d visited it only once, to see Kilgrave. Not to talk to him; she knew all too well the power of Kilgrave’s tongue. No, it was for her own peace of mind. To reassure herself that he was really locked up, that he was powerless. He could never get out.

Jessica closed her eyes, sitting back in her chair. She remembered.

She remembered observing him in his cell. Kilgrave in his blue jumpsuit, standard issue. Perched on his bed, cross-legged, head down. Writing in a journal. She’d asked what it was for and the warden had mentioned that it went to their psychiatrist. The ramblings of a depraved mind.

_Depraved mind? That’s rich, coming from you._

She opened her eyes and focused on the report in front of her, bringing herself back to the present. If that psychiatrist was Doctor Hargreaves, then…

She could put two and two together.

This was a trap.

_Alice and the rabbit hole. You remember Alice?_

His hand ghosted over her shoulder and she flinched, jumping out of her seat. Her elbow caught the stack of divorce papers and they went crashing to the floor, papers flying around her.

“Shit!”

She was breathing hard, panicking. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there, she was imagining things but she was shaking like a leaf.

Jessica closed her eyes and swallowed. “Birch Street. Main Street. Higgins Drive…”

Breathe. Focus.

All her instincts told her to get out. Get out, run; she could probably outrun an Olympic athlete with this much adrenaline pumping through her.

Breathe. Focus. _You know what to do. Catch him before he catches you._

She opened her eyes and turned back to the desk, staring down at the letter of employment. 

_There’s the rabbit hole, Jessica. Are you ready?_

The letter was signed by a Doctor Miklos Kozlov. She scribbled the name down, stuffed the relevant papers into her bag, and headed out.

*

“Trish?”

She was at a café surrounded by people, her paranoia at full tilt.

“Jess – I can’t – bad connection–”

There was too much static. She gritted her teeth. “Just be safe.”

At least Trish had answered. Deborah didn’t. The call went to voicemail and Jessica tried not to assume the worst. She left a message urging Deborah to call her back.

Right. She was armed with a laptop, phone, the papers from Hargreaves, the contact card from Simpson, and a change of clothes. She ordered a burger and cheese fries and spent the next hour searching for Kozlov. He was a medical doctor, military connections judging by the search results, but the only information she could find was sketchy.

She found one picture of him on a scientific journal where he’d published a redacted paper about the results of a medical drug trial. She tried a reverse image search and came up with an image of Kozlov and his wife at a wedding. The wife was called Rina and part of her Facebook profile was public. They lived in Queens.

Ah. Now she was getting somewhere.

Two hours later Jessica knocked on the door of the Kozlovs’ house out in the suburbs, and Rina answered. She was a short woman with curly brown hair and a furrowed brow that made her appear to be in a permanent state of anxiety.

Rina blinked. “Yes?”

“Hi there, I’m Detective Jones. I need to speak to your husband, Doctor Kozlov, about an incident that took place at his workplace recently.”

“An incident, what incident?”

“I really need to speak to your husband about it, ma’am. Is he available?”

She was nailing the whole officious-sounding tone, Jessica thought. She’d been interrogated by enough officers to know how they talked.

“No,” said Rina. “He’s on tour in Afghanistan so I don’t think you’d know about any incident. Can I see your ID, please?”

Well, shit. Busted. She’d gambled on a half-truth and it had not paid off. Jessica shifted, exhaling, and showed Rina her card.

“Alias Investigations? So you’re not a police officer.” Rina shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

She started to shut the door and Jessica stuck her foot in the way. “Wait! Look, I’m a private detective. I’m investigating a missing person case. Doctor Mallory Hargreaves. Ever heard of her?”

Rina paused, licking her lips, though she still had both hands on the door. “She’s one of my husband’s colleagues.”

“She’s been missing for ten days. Have you heard from your husband lately?”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “No. But I’m pretty sure I know what happened to Doctor Hargreaves and if I’m right, the man who did it is gonna come for you next.”

“Okay,” said Rina. “Get your foot off my porch.”

Jessica was pretty good at tricking her way into obtaining information. The one thing she wasn’t good at was getting people to listen. The door slammed in her face. She left her card outside on the doorstep, just in case.

“Call me!”

_A little charm goes a long way. She didn’t like you, did she? Then again nobody does._

She could stake out the house. The possibility of that bearing fruit seemed slim.

Jessica bit her lip.

*

She still needed to find Miklos Kozlov. If his wife’s story was anywhere near the truth, he wouldn’t be returning home anytime soon. That made sense if he worked at the Raft. Simpson had told her that people were killed during Kilgrave’s escape, but Rina hadn’t seemed to be aware of that. Either she didn’t know, or Kozlov was still alive.

She gave up and went back to Hargreaves’ place, figuring that she could return another time to see if she could change Rina’s mind.

At the house, she dived right back into her search but this time she was looking for something different. She was looking for evidence of Kilgrave. A case file, records, notes, anything. She dug out every single document in the study, spread the papers out on the floor and went through them one by one.

Nothing. She wasn’t just lacking information on Kilgrave. There were no paper records of Doctor Hargreaves’ patients at all. Either she kept them somewhere else or someone had taken them. Maybe she had an office – Jessica would have guessed Birch Psychiatric Hospital but that had turned out to be a dead end. 

She was running out of leads.

She considered Simpson. He’d left her his number, clearly wanted her to contact him, but that only made her more suspicious. A last resort.

Jessica called Deborah again and left her another, more irate voice message asking her to call back.

Finally, later that evening someone did call her back. Jessica was sitting with her back against the wall of the study, nursing a paper cut and a jar of peanut butter.

It was Rina. “I called my husband. He didn’t answer.”

The worry in her tone wasn’t hard to hear.

“Do you wanna talk?”

“Yes. I don’t know where my husband is. Can you help me?”

“I’ll come over,” Jessica said.

“I’m not at home. I thought, if there’s someone coming for me, I don’t want to be a sitting duck. I’m staying with a friend, I’ll give you the address.”

She scribbled it down on the back of an envelope and got into another cab. Her chest felt tight. This could be the trap. She’d thought it was Simpson, but it could be anyone…  Or maybe her suspicions about Kilgrave were unfounded and he had nothing to do with Doctor Hargreaves’ disappearance. Maybe something else was going on. Her evidence was circumstantial, not conclusive.

It didn’t matter. She’d taken on the case and Rina needed her help whether she was being controlled or not. She couldn’t walk away.

_You’re a good girl, Jessica. Always doing the right thing._

“Shut up,” she muttered, closing her eyes. The interior of the cab felt claustrophobic. She repeated the same thoughts to herself: she’d taken on the case. Rina needed her help. She couldn’t walk away.

She couldn’t walk away.

*

The cab pulled up outside a house that Jessica knew all too well. Her stomach became a pit.

The white picket fence. The leafy avenue. The green-painted door. She’d smashed a man’s head into that porch, nearly killed him. Put two security guards in hospital.

This was the house that Kilgrave had trapped her in for days, along with his daughter Chloe and her mother Alice. They were safe back home in England, thank God, but as she stepped out of the car the memories hit her and she had to stop to take a breath.  

In this house was a basement…

She closed her eyes. _Birch Street. Main Street._

He’d strapped her down. Left her in the basement until she’d given in–

_Higgins Drive._

Until she’d surrendered. She’d pretended to love him. She had loved him. It was so mixed up in her head, the times when she’d had free will, the times when he’d controlled her, the difference between desire and disgust, love and hatred, fear and want.

_Cobalt Lane._

It wasn’t working. She opened her eyes. Her chest still felt tight.

Nothing to be done. She walked forward, expecting guards to step out at any moment. Nothing happened. She stepped onto the porch, set her hand on the handle of the green door, and opened it. The house was the same. Jessica swallowed, stepping inside, sure that her heart couldn’t race any faster.

She glanced at the kitchen, moved past it further down the hallway, and turned into the main living area where her gaze was caught by the figure lounging in an armchair.

She stopped.

His lips curved upwards when he saw her. It wasn’t quite a smile. More like how she imagined a snake might look when an unsuspecting mouse scurried right into its jaws.

Kilgrave.


	3. told you so

He looked like she remembered him. Not from prison; he would have ditched the jumpsuit fast. No, he wore a pinstriped suit, maroon shirt and matching tie, leather shoes, even a handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket. One leg loosely crossed over the other. A cell phone resting on the arm of his chair too, but she couldn’t see anyone else with him – why didn’t he have any guards? Where were they?

“Jessica,” he said.

She didn’t move. Her mouth set into a grim line.

“Oh, come on,” said Kilgrave. “You could at least pretend to be surprised.”

“Where’s Rina?”

She expected there to be others. The inhabitants of this household, for one. She’d never met them. For all she knew Kilgrave had murdered the first lot and whatever poor family lived here now had no idea that they’d moved into a snake pit.

“Rina’s at home,” said Kilgrave. “She gave you this address and settled down for a brandy. I don’t have any quarrel with her.”

“And me?”

“I don’t have a quarrel with you either. I promise you that.”

He stood up to approach her, clasping his hands behind his back. She realised that her fists were clenched and forced herself to keep her hands flat at her sides. It was like nothing had happened. Like a year hadn’t passed. He looked the same and the lurching in her stomach was the same and the house was the same…

She licked her lips. “Mallory Hargreaves. Where is she?”

“Dead.”

She’d expected to hear it but it still hit hard. “The body?”

“In the ocean. She swam out as far as she could. Wasn’t very far.”

That vibrant woman she’d seen in the photographs… Gone. He probably thought it was poetic justice, drowning her under the waves after he’d been trapped in an underwater prison.

No point dwelling on it. Other people were still alive, and still in danger.  

“She has a daughter, Deborah. Did you send her to me?”

“I did. Smart girl.”

He was merely feet away from her now, the closest they had been since over a year ago when the police had taken him away. Not a ghost, not a shadow. Not a voice in her head. A real, breathing human being. He was clean-shaven. She could smell his cologne.  

Jessica shook her head. “Why?”

If he wanted to get her, he could have gotten her. It wouldn’t be hard to find her address. He’d had the best part of two weeks to knock on her door or send armed men to kidnap her or call her or _something_ , not this stupid mystery bullshit.

“It’s a long story.” He gestured to the couch. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

She ignored the request, but did take a couple of steps towards the couch to put some distance between them. Then she folded her arms and stared at him.

Kilgrave took a breath. “I want your help.”

“What?”

“I need you, Jessica. I’m on the run, I’m on my own. I can’t make it out alone.”

He… what?

She was no longer staring at him. She was gaping at him, confusion written all over her face. He’d escaped, the slippery prick, and now he’d lured her here to ask for her help?

He reached out a hand and she flinched. “I’m not safe here,” he continued. “It’s only a matter of time before they catch me, so. Here I am. Talking to you.”

“No.” She was incredulous. “No, I’m not gonna help you. Jesus Christ, Kilgrave. I _want_ them to catch you. I want you back in there.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew what they were doing.”

She gritted her teeth. “Spare me the sob story. I don’t care if they had your balls on a rack.”

“They were experimenting on me,” said Kilgrave plainly. “They want to replicate my power, use it to fight wars and God knows what else. There’s no way that ends well.”

She paused. Replicate his power? Mind control… Mind control in a military setting. Zombie soldiers? Or worse, using it on civilians…

Jessica swallowed. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. These people have no scruples. Hargreaves was one of them.”

“These people? Who?”

“IGH.”

He said it with a straight face. The bogeyman. This invisible organisation that he’d dangled over her head like a noose once before and he was pulling the same stunt again with absolutely zero shame.

Her mouth twisted. She lunged forward and grabbed him by the throat, lifting him up.

“Say that again! Lie to me one more goddamn time and I swear…”

He gasped. “I’m not – Jess–”

She let him go and he fell back by the couch, massaging his throat. She watched him, primed to face his guards or minions or whoever he’d compelled today, but still nothing. They appeared to be alone. Straightening up, he picked up the cell phone he’d left on the armchair and tucked it into his pocket.

“I know I sound like the boy who cried wolf,” he said. “I know. But I’m telling the truth. Did you find anything when you were tracking down Doctor Hargreaves? Any evidence?”

She’d found the letter of employment. The papers from IGH. But this had happened before; Kilgrave had tricked her before. He’d stolen the IGH medical records concerning Jessica and her family from Dorothy and planted them on an innocent man to make Jessica think that IGH was after her. If he wanted to make Jessica think that big bad IGH was at the Raft and treating him badly, he could use his mind control to create a paper trail. All the breadcrumbs she had been following came from him.

“You wanted me to take this case,” she said. “You made Deborah come to me. I don’t have any evidence. I only have what you wanted me to see.”

“So you did find something.”

“I found you.”

“Yes,” he said, “and what you’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. Hargreaves told me everything she knew. The names of her colleagues, their contact details. We can track them down together. We can stop them.”

Had he always been this blatantly manipulative? Or was it that she could see through his bullshit now? “If you know so much, stop them yourself. You don’t have to drag me into it.”

“I’m going up against a shadowy corporate organisation experimenting with mind control and you’re the only person I know who can’t be compelled. I need allies I can trust and you have a skillset I can use. It’s a no-brainer, really.”

He was gazing at her, not pleading, but with eyes wide and sincere. She’d fallen for it before. Trusted him before.

She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

She lunged at him but he was prepared this time; he dived to the other end of the couch and she missed, her fist hitting the cushion with a heavy thump. She threw a second punch and he skittered around the back, and now they were caught in a stupid game of merry-go-round, Kilgrave keeping the couch between them as she circled towards him.

She rolled her eyes.

“Wait!” he said, holding his phone aloft.

She’d been about to throw the sofa out of the way so there was nowhere to hide, but she paused, eyes narrowing.

“I don’t want to do this, Jessica, but I do have a contingency in place. Don’t make me use it.”

“What?”

“One message and there goes the neighbourhood. Come on. Hear me out.”

So his phone was a detonator. He could kill a bunch of people with a message. Fine: then all she had to do was take it off him. Jessica stepped back, her eyes never leaving him.

He took that as an invitation. “Look,” he said. “We’ve had our differences, I know that. If I could go to anyone else for help, I would, but I can’t. You think I’m bad? Wait until the whole world is under someone else’s control.”

“You’re seriously throwing doomsday scenarios at me? Why should I believe a single word that comes out of your mouth?”

“I gave you this case so you could find the evidence for yourself. It’s all right there in front of you. Let’s find Kozlov. He’s got to have answers–”

“What, so you can kill him? How many people did you murder when you escaped? How many have already died?”

“You’re not listening.”

He looked disappointed. He always looked disappointed. He never learned that she couldn’t meet his expectations nor did she want to. What did he think, that he could swan back into her life and she’d jump at the opportunity to help him? Did he really think that she’d believe him when all he ever did was manipulate her?

She paused.

“I’m going to need proof,” she said. “Can you show me proof?”

He relaxed slightly; she saw the tension in his shoulders lift. “We can get that from Kozlov. He was in charge.”

“So we find Kozlov, squeeze him for info, and then what?”

He shrugged. “Well, personally, I’d kill him, but you’re the hero, Jess. You tell me.”

“That’s not good enough,” she said. “Promise that you won’t kill anyone. Or I’m sending you straight back to the Raft.”

“Fair enough. Okay. Deal.”

He stepped towards her and held out his hand. Jessica offered the briefest of smiles, an acknowledgement. Truce. She raised her hand to shake his.

The blow she struck was well-timed and perfectly calculated. Her fist met his cheek and he went down in a heap, just like that, the cell phone tumbling out of his hand.

Jessica stood there, breathing fast, and looked down at him.

Would you look at that. It felt good.

*

She put black masking tape over his mouth, tied his hands behind his back, tied his ankles together with plastic cable, and threw him on the couch. She checked his phone. She paced back and forth, torn between searching the rest of the house and not letting Kilgrave out of her sight.

She had to search the house. She couldn’t take any chances.

She did it quickly, even though every room stirred up memories she thought she’d suppressed. Being sprawled on that tiled kitchen floor, waking up to the sound of his voice, responding to his commands for the first time after he’d taken control. The staircase, running up in a panic to check on Alice; the bathroom where she’d stood under that shower with the water stinging the fresh welts on her skin; the bedroom where he’d made love to her tenderly after she’d told him that she hated him…

He was downstairs, she reminded herself. Tied up and helpless. She’d beaten him easily.

The rooms were empty of anything but ghosts.

She went back down and her eyes caught the door by the foot of the staircase. The door to the basement.

Swallowing, she stepped forward, lifted the latch and opened the door.

A high-pitched scream, a wild-eyed face, a _knife_ –

“Shit!”

She ducked and the blade whistled past an inch from her shoulder, and it was a _kid_ , a boy, arms flailing to take another stab at her. She grabbed at his wrist and shoved hard and he tumbled backwards with a yelp, down the basement stairs. She slammed the door shut, locked it, and stood there with her back flat against the door, breathing hard.

Holy shit.

A kid. Maybe eleven or twelve. She heard scrabbling sounds from behind the door, maybe the rest of his family. One mystery solved. The door handle rattled. She hissed out a curse and grabbed a dining chair, propping it up against the handle to keep the door locked.

_Okay. Think._

She’d like to save the family if she could, but Jessica knew how this worked. They might be programmed to attack any intruders if Kilgrave wasn’t there, especially her, and anyone programmed to follow Kilgrave’s orders would do so until they were forcibly stopped. Better to keep them trapped for now. They’d survive until his control wore off.

She set the alarm on her phone to twelve hours from now.

*

In the morning, she called Simpson.

“I have him,” she said without preamble. “You were right, he came for me. Why don’t you pick him up and cut me a check for cleaning up your mess.”

She didn’t bother to hide her annoyance. She’d pulled an all-nighter, her eyes were itching from watching Kilgrave, and none of this should have happened. And S.H.I.E.L.D, the government people, they were supposed to have this all under control. Not rely on her, a civilian, to bring Kilgrave in yet again.

He’d woken up about an hour into her vigil. His eyes had opened, found her seated in the armchair opposite him, then he’d made muffled sounds and thrashed wildly, falling off the couch. She’d gotten up, walked over and pressed her boot on his crotch. Kilgrave had stared up at her and she’d pressed harder. She hadn’t needed to say anything. He’d understood.

She’d also sent Trish a message:

_Got him. Stay put for now. I’ll let you know when it’s safe._

The reply came while she was waiting for Simpson:

_Thank God. Are you okay?_

She hadn’t replied yet when a black van pulled up outside the house and Jessica watched as armed men picked up Kilgrave – still tied up and gagged – and hauled him into the back. Simpson was supervising.

“By the way,” she said, “there’s a family locked in the basement. You might wanna help. Tell them I’m sorry I ate the last of their Cheerios.”

Simpson gave her an odd look. “Will do. How’d you do it?”

“Catching Kilgrave?” She shrugged. “I got lucky.”

“No one else could stop him.” Simpson shook his head. “Once he got out…”

“Were you there?”

“No.”

“That explains why you’re breathing. What are you gonna do with him?”

“We’ve got a secure place to detain him until we can take him back to the Raft. His prison cell was destroyed. They’re still working on repairs.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. Jessica straightened up abruptly and walked over to the van.

“Hey.” Simpson called after her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m coming with you. You don’t want to risk this asshole getting out. Trust me.”

*

She’d be damned if she had to go through it all again. The threats, the games, the fear. Kilgrave was a ticking time bomb and when the countdown reached zero it would be her life that got blown to smithereens.

Simpson protested, of course. She was a civilian; she had no business getting involved. But she reminded him sharply that she was the reason they’d managed to recapture Kilgrave and the look in her eyes stopped him from arguing further.

So here she was, in the back of a van with a gagged and restrained Kilgrave, and Simpson sitting awkwardly next to her. Questions flickered across her mind. Kilgrave’s words, the things he’d said… She couldn’t take them seriously, could she? She didn’t know who Simpson was, she didn’t know whose van she’d climbed into, but…

Her heart sank.

Didn’t this seem a little too easy?

Didn’t Kilgrave normally have multiple safeguards in place? Minions to serve and protect him. People to threaten. She’d taken his cell phone and, well, that had been easy to disable. She’d waited twelve hours. She’d made sure that he couldn’t be controlling anyone else.

“What did you say your department was?”

Simpson cleared his throat. “I didn’t. I’m just a regular cop. But I used to be in Special Ops and I still have a few contacts. We’re trying to keep this whole thing on the down and low. Don’t want the civilians panicking over a fugitive with mind control.”

“So you’re not acting on behalf of the NYPD?”

He was ex-military. That unease in her chest hadn’t abated.

“Technically I’m acting on behalf of the armed forces. The Raft is a military operation. Way above my pay grade.”

“Do you know a Doctor Miklos Kozlov?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Kozlov? Where’d you hear that name?”

“He was next on Kilgrave’s list.”

“Must be because he works at the Raft. Good thing we stopped him before he could hurt anyone else.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. Whatever, Simpson wasn’t in charge here. She’d have to talk to whoever was, and if it turned out that this was another of Kilgrave’s traps, well… she’d deal with it.

The van stopped. She’d endured Kilgrave’s baleful eyes on her the entire way. Jessica watched in silence as the two armed guards hauled him up and the van doors opened. She followed them out, craning her neck up to see their destination. Looked like an abandoned warehouse. She couldn't make out the signage; half of it was covered by a loose awning and a couple of letters had dropped off. It might have said _industrial_. Industrial engineering?

Simpson unlocked the padlock on the outer door and they made their way inside.

“Where are we?”

Her voice echoed. The back of her neck and her arms were prickling and she didn’t know why. There was an empty gurney in the corridor and the place was thick with dust. A medical facility?

“This used to be a research laboratory,” said Simpson. “It was shut down fourteen years ago.”

“Why?”

He shrugged, pausing to unlock another door, this one made of thick steel. It was too dark to make out the interior. As she stepped inside, the guards made Kilgrave sit down on another empty gurney. She made out the faint gleam of metal: more medical equipment. A filing cabinet by the wall. Two plastic chairs.

Simpson picked up what looked like a spray can from a metal table and Jessica squinted at it. Why wouldn’t someone turn on a light?

“Why here?” she asked. “What is this, Frankenstein’s laboratory?”

“Not quite,” said Simpson, and turned to spray the can in her face.

Jessica reeled back with a cry; her eyes _burned_. Pepper spray? She coughed and spluttered, stumbled back and tripped over Kilgrave’s gurney, then landed on the hard floor with a painful smack to her rear. For a second she had double vision.

“Simpson!” she yelled, grabbing at the gurney to try and haul herself up. Kilgrave was on his feet too, struggling to keep his balance with his hands tied behind his back…  

She heard hasty footsteps, the slam of a door. They’d shut her in.

There was a sound like a nozzle twisting, and then the hiss of gas. She got up and coughed again, trying to cover her mouth and nose, her eyes streaming.

Shit.

_Shit._

The door was right there but the world was getting darker. She couldn’t keep her eyes open.

She couldn’t make it out.

*

In her dreams, she was floating.

The river was dark, churning. Lights flashed along the surface, flickering. Her ears were full of noise.

A hand reached out for her.

It was the stranger, her pool partner, with sunken face and hollow cheeks. She tried to speak and dirty water filled her mouth.

“Wake up. Jessica. Jessica!”

Her lungs filled. She choked and thrashed. The stranger jabbed an accusing finger at her. She was drowning.

“Jessica!”

*

“Jessica?”

Jessica came to with a groan, opening her eyes. Her head swam.

The first thing she saw was Kilgrave’s face peering at her, far too close.

“Ugh…” she muttered. “Get away.”

“You all right?” Kilgrave asked. “Your eyes look sore.”

It was bright, she realised, too bright for her liking. A light shone down from the ceiling, glaring, fluorescent. Kilgrave sat back and she collected herself, sitting up to look around. Her memory slowly returned. This was the laboratory that Simpson had taken her to, the place he had claimed he would hold Kilgrave. And to think she had suspected this was Kilgrave’s trick.

“Where are we?” she asked. The floor was cold and dirty. It didn’t look like anyone had been here for years.

“Prison, presumably. I hate to say I told you so, but… I did warn you. Can you break us out? Smash through the window?”

He indicated the window which looked out to the corridor. She got up to take a look at it, swallowing a wave of nausea that rose in her throat. Corridor was empty. This place… Something about it seemed familiar. One thing she did notice was a camera out in the corridor, a tiny red light blinking. It was pointing at them. Someone was watching them.

“Did you do this?” she asked, walking around the perimeter of the lab. It didn’t take long.

“No!” he said. “No, you knocked me out. I should have known not to trust you. You’re a liar through and through.”

He sat up on the gurney, his expression accusing. It occurred to her that he was no longer restrained.

“How did you get free?”

He flexed his fingers and winced. “The old-fashioned way. I managed to wriggle out of the cable ties. Took ages. But there’s no getting out of that door.”

Jessica ignored him. She’d completed her circuit of the lab, and now she started looking through what was there, opening up the filing cabinet, searching every nook and cranny. The cabinet was empty. Again, it seemed like this place had been cleared out a long time ago.

“Jessica.” Kilgrave’s voice held a bite of impatience. “What are you waiting for? The window is right there. That glass is eminently breakable.”

“So break it,” said Jessica, moving back to the middle of the room which she had avoided so far because Kilgrave was there. The piece of equipment next to the gurney… A heart monitor, she thought, but what the heck was that metal crane? She didn’t know what it was, but it set off the prickling in her skin.

“No food, no water.” He looked up at her, clasping his hands in his lap. “They can’t mean to keep us here for long. So what do they want with you?”

“You tell me.”

There was a bucket under the gurney. She supposed if push came to shove they’d have to use it when they needed to pee. Nothing else available.

Of course, she could smash the glass. She’d injure herself doing it with her bare hands, but she’d get out. As for what she’d do with Kilgrave… She didn’t know. Knock him out and leave him? But then he might escape. Take him with her? Where?

“I don’t know,” he said. “Really, Jessica, what’s stopping you? What’s going on in that head of yours?”

She looked out of the window through to the empty corridor. “We’re not alone.”

“Ah, the security camera. That’s what it was like on the Raft too. They were always watching.”

It was an uncomfortable sensation. She resumed her pacing, feeling increasingly claustrophobic. Kilgrave got up, walking over to peer out of the window.

“We’re not on the Raft,” he said. “I know that much. Are we still in the city?”

“Yes.”

“So they’ve found us a different cell, temporary. Not a very good one either, not for people like us. I suppose there’s always the gas.”

Gas…

“You should check yourself,” he went on. “See how intact you are. Any puncture marks, stitches, strange bruises?”

She turned to stare at him. “Puncture marks?”

“Injections. Needles. I’d wake up on a regular basis with yet another scar.”

He rolled up his sleeve and showed her his bare arm, the soft skin of the crook of his elbow. The skin was bruised with several small red marks, like pinpricks. Jessica stared, and felt the room sway around her.

“They did that to you?”

“I told you they did. Think. Why would they put you in here with me? Why go to the trouble of capturing you too?”

She swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“They experimented on me. They’ll experiment on you too.”

“No.” She didn’t believe it. “No.” Why did this lab look so familiar? She paced around again, a caged animal. “No.”

No, _he’d_ set this up. He was fucking with her again. It was an elaborate game, a joke, a way of getting back at her for putting him in prison…

“You don’t have to let them.” He moved back to the middle of the room and folded his arms, still and certain in contrast to her restlessness. “You can get us out.”

“I’m not letting you out!”

Her head pounded. This awful light, she hated it. It bled through her eyes. What would happen if she did smash the window? If Simpson and the others were watching them, couldn’t they stop her? They must know about her super strength; it was one thing she hadn’t been able to hide in the police report back when Kilgrave had first been caught.

She glared at the camera, winking out of reach in the corridor.

“Hey! Hey, asswipes! Simpson, are you watching this?”

“Simpson?” said Kilgrave but she talked over him.

“I got Kilgrave for you and this is how you repay me? Let me out! Do you hear me? Let me out!”

“Well, that seems likely to work.”

“Shut up.”

He rolled his eyes. God, she couldn’t stand to be cooped up in here with him for long. Five minutes with Kilgrave was enough to drive her crazy.

She went over to the door and tried to open it. Obviously it was locked. It was also heavy enough that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to bust it open. Kilgrave was right: the window was the better option.

She looked back at Kilgrave, who was watching her with the bored exasperation of a man waiting for a fly to find the gap in an open window.

Maybe there was a third option. If they were being watched…

She strode over to Kilgrave and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, yanking his head back.

Kilgrave spluttered. “Hey!”

“Listen up! You need Kilgrave alive, right? That’s your job. Well, you’re doing a shitty impression of it.”

“Stop–”

She shook him like a ragdoll and he shut up. “I want out. Let me out or I swear to God I will kill him right now and you won’t have jack shit left to experiment with.”

She stopped. Kilgrave was breathing fast; she could hear his panicked heartbeats. Problem was, they’d heard nothing from Simpson or anyone else since she’d woken up here. She didn’t know who was monitoring them, if they were being actively watched right now, or if they had a way to communicate with their prisoners. Surely they did. That camera couldn’t be for show.

“I’ll do it!” she said. “Don’t think I won’t. This asshole made my life a misery for months.”

Kilgrave made a choked sound. “What if they call your bluff?”

She set her hands around his neck and squeezed. He grabbed at her arms but she’d forgotten how pathetically weak he was. He really was nothing without anyone to mind control. He choked up, blotches of colour showing around the bruise on his cheek.

He tried again. “Stop!”

She squeezed harder.

There was a sound like a nozzle twisting. The hiss of gas.

Oh.

Jessica looked up. “Shit!”

Was it coming from the ceiling? She was already getting dizzy; she let go of Kilgrave and covered her mouth and nose, but the gas was impossible to escape, it was everywhere…

“I _told_ you to smash the window,” Kilgrave wheezed.

 The world turned fuzzy. She blacked out.


	4. they always want something

The second time she came to was in an office. She recognised the man in front of her. They’d never met but she’d studied pictures of him.

Kozlov. Bald except for a thin patch of white hair, very respectable-looking in his lab coat and suit. Framed certificates hung on the wall behind him and a picture of his wife was framed next to a pot of pens on his desk. All in all she felt like she’d landed in the headmaster’s office at school.  

“Miss Jones,” he said. “Ah, may I call you Jessica?”

“You,” she snarled.

She was seated in a swivel desk chair, no restraints or anything holding her back. She had a blinding headache but she ignored it, jumping to her feet ready to wring the bastard’s neck.

Kozlov held up his hands. “Before you attack me, could you hear me out? I’m here to talk. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

“Why am I here? Why did you lock me up with _him_?”

“My apologies,” said Kozlov. He was perfectly serene as he gazed up at her. The confidence of old age, perhaps. Maybe he didn’t care too much if it all ended here. “We were testing a hypothesis.”

“What?”

“Would you like some water? Tea? Coffee?”

She swallowed. Yes, she was parched. She needed to use the bathroom too. She begrudgingly accepted a coffee brought in by a young assistant, and it occurred to her that she didn’t know how long she’d been knocked out for.

Jessica returned to her seat and surreptitiously rolled up her sleeves, glancing at her bare arms. There. A tiny red puncture mark in the crook of her arm. She took in a breath.

“Kilgrave can control anyone he comes into contact with,” said Kozlov. “We’ve observed this; I’m sure you have too. But while he was imprisoned at the Raft, he claimed that he’d met one person he couldn’t control. You.”

Jessica stared at him. She was starting to follow.

“We wanted to be sure,” Kozlov went on. “That’s why we put you in the lab with him. I apologise again for the deception. Once we saw you ignore his command…”

“You confirmed your hypothesis,” said Jessica. “Thanks for warning me, asshole. What do you care whether I’m immune? What is this about?”

Kozlov smiled. “I wish Karl could see you now. He’d be delighted.”

She felt like she was going to explode. “Who’s Karl?”

“I wondered if you’d recognise the facility. Fifteen years ago, you were taken there to be treated after a near-fatal car crash. It took Karl two weeks to fix you. We weren’t sure you’d make it.”

The breath had been knocked from her body. She was frozen in place, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. So the lab was… He was…

“IGH,” she whispered.

She’d seen the evidence, but she hadn’t _believed_ it. She hadn’t imagined meeting the people responsible for her powers.

“Yes,” Kozlov confirmed. “That facility was our base of operations until we ran out of funds and were shut down. Karl Malus is the doctor who saved your life. The two of us developed the treatment we used to save you many years ago.”

Her head was spinning. “What does this have to do with Kilgrave?”

Kozlov paused. “Kilgrave is… our fault.”

“What?”

“I believe that Kilgrave acquired his abilities through a similar treatment to the one you received. Back in the early days, we shared our research with two scientists in England. They were researching neurodegenerative diseases and they wanted to investigate applications of our work in that area.”

“Kilgrave’s parents.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“They experimented on their own son.” Her voice shook. “These are the kind of people you worked with?”

Kozlov looked taken aback. “No… No, please don’t think of them in that way. Albert and Louise loved their son. He was seriously ill, he would have been dead within a year without treatment and they would have tried anything to save him. They’re good people.”

“Kilgrave’s parents turned him into a monster,” she said. “You did the same to me. Why? Why did you do this to me?”

He frowned. “To save your life. We’re doctors. It’s what we do.”

To her shame her voice cracked. “What about Mom? What about Dad? What about my brother? Why didn’t you save them?”

“We couldn’t. You were the only one who survived the crash. The rest of your family were already dead.”

She licked her lips. There were several more questions on the tip of her tongue but she didn’t know if she wanted to hear the answers, if she wanted to go there… She’d spent most of her adult life not thinking about old wounds. She had plenty of fresh ones without dragging up the bodies of her dead family.

All her life she had wondered if there was a reason she had survived when her family hadn’t, a reason for her powers. Her life had seemed so aimless. Why was she alive? What made her so special?

Now she had the answer and it turned out that she wasn’t special. IGH wasn’t full of crazy scientists hell-bent on turning innocent people into mutant freaks. They were doctors trying to save their patients. Her abilities were an accident, a side-effect they hadn’t anticipated.

 _Oh, God_ , she thought. She and Kilgrave. They were the same. Having that kind of power as a child… He’d never stood a chance. As for her, orphaned and angry and alone, was it any wonder that she’d turned out this way?

_It’s almost as if we were made for each other._

She blinked. Kozlov was watching her, giving her a moment to process. Forget the past. He hadn’t explained what IGH was doing here, now.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because we’d like you to do something for us.”

Here it was, she thought. The point of this conversation. They always wanted something.

Kozlov cleared his throat. “We’ve been trying to develop an inoculation to Kilgrave’s power. So far we’ve been unsuccessful. We believe that his parents’ work might help us. They had direct contact with their son, they took our research in a different direction. We’d like your help to bring them in.”

Oh.

Jessica swallowed. She wasn’t sure what she had expected him to say, nor how she felt about it. An inoculation… A cure for Kilgrave? What was Kozlov trying to achieve?

“Why do you want to make an inoculation?” she asked. “He can’t control anyone from a prison cell. That’s why we put him away.”

“And he escaped,” said Kozlov. “You know that’s a risk.”

“So cut out his tongue. Gag him. Do a better job! There are other ways to stop him hurting people.”

“Jessica…” He gave a world-weary sigh, like he knew everything and she was a child complaining about things she didn’t understand. “We don’t want to make this inoculation only for Kilgrave. He’s not the only man in the world with mind control powers. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. Every day more children are born with abilities like yours. There are beings from beyond our world who want to invade Earth and subjugate our people. This cure could help protect us all.”

She stared. Wow, he’d gone full-out conspiracy theory. There was a subsection of people who thought that aliens had already infiltrated Earth and were controlling the population. New York City itself had been invaded only a few years ago. So she couldn’t exactly say that he was crazy, even if he sounded crazy.

“Okay,” she said. “If that’s what you want, if that’s what you believe, go for it. You don’t need my involvement.”

Kozlov shook his head. “Albert and Louise have been in hiding for a long time. Our relationship broke down years ago; I’m afraid they won’t come to us willingly. But with you and Kilgrave working together, you can… persuade them to join us.”

Wait. Hang on. Had he just said…?

“Me _and Kilgrave_?” she repeated.

Kozlov nodded.

“No,” she said. “No way. Are you insane? You want to let Kilgrave loose on his parents? He’s a maniac. He’s a danger to everyone he meets.”

“Not if he’s being handled by you.”

She laughed, sharp and bitter. “You think I can handle Kilgrave? Last time almost destroyed me.”

“This time you’ll have our support. We’ll keep track of you so we can bring him in at any time if he misbehaves.”

“Bullshit. You can’t control Kilgrave. You can’t escape from him.” She was getting that panicky feeling again, the horrible one that weighed in her chest and made her weak and shaky. “If you want Albert and Louise that badly, I’ll track them down for you. You don’t need Kilgrave to do it.”

“I want to bring them in without harming them. You and Kilgrave are the best way to do that.”

Her and Kilgrave.

It was the last thing she wanted to hear.

Jessica stood up and headed for the door. “Thanks, but no thanks. Kilgrave stays in his box, or I’m out.”

The door was ajar. She caught sight of Simpson in the corridor outside, following their conversation with furrowed brow. The muscle. She wasn’t going to be allowed to walk out of this.

“Jessica.” Kozlov’s voice was soft but something about it made her turn around. He regarded her evenly. “I understand that while you were with Kilgrave you killed a man.”

Her blood ran cold. “What?”

“Your friend Trish Walker’s Krav Maga instructor. Terrible business. The case was thrown out, I believe, but all the paperwork is there if it was ever to be reopened…”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I don’t want to.” His gaze was direct. “We have a shared goal. We both want to protect people. What do you say?”

She twisted her mouth. The prospect of having to work with Kilgrave, having to be his _handler_ , like he was a yappy and vicious dog and she was the poor schmuck forced to put him on a leash… He was fucking intolerable at the best of times. And then there was their history together… Her stomach knotted. A lot of complicated feelings she’d buried away.

But if saying no meant that she’d be turned over to the police… It wasn’t only the Krav Maga instructor they could get her for. She’d done a lot of shit that she regretted. And if doing this meant that they could make an inoculation to Kilgrave, stop him from ever controlling anyone else again…

What would Trish do?

She hoped Trish was sunning herself on a beach somewhere far away by now. But if Trish were here, if Trish were hearing this right now… she’d say yes, wouldn’t she? The chance to help all of humanity resist any kind of telepathic influence. No one could ever be controlled again. Kilgrave wouldn’t be able to strip her of her power, her dignity, he’d never be able to force her to submit to him…

_Don’t lie to yourself. You wanted it. You loved it._

She closed her eyes and wrenched herself back to the present.

“Okay,” she said, and met Kozlov’s gaze. “But I have one condition.”

*

Her condition was that this was a one-time deal. She and Kilgrave would get his parents, bring them back to the IGH lab, and then she was out of there. Kilgrave would go back in his box and she’d never have to see him again.

She told Kozlov about Hargreaves’ death, to which he only gave a resigned nod. “That makes thirteen total.”

Thirteen people dead, and he still wanted to let Kilgrave loose on the world.

She got her phone back with an added feature: an app that showed her Kilgrave’s location. They’d implanted a tracker on him, Kozlov explained, so they could always use the app to find him.

It was sensible, she thought. Kind of horrifying if she considered it for more than two seconds, but then the thought of Kilgrave escaping for more than two seconds was even more horrifying. Still, it meant that IGH was in control. She’d worried about that – she’d always worry about that where Kilgrave was concerned – but they were taking the right precautions.

As for finding Kilgrave’s parents… Kozlov gave her a lead.

“They’re in Boston,” he told her.

Kozlov wouldn’t say how he knew. Apparently Kilgrave Senior held a research post at the University of Massachusetts under a false name. Like father, like son.

Anyway, it meant either a four hour plus road trip, or an hour’s flight. That was an easy choice.

“I need to prepare,” she said. “Let me go back to my apartment, pick up a few things. I’ll be back to collect Kilgrave.”

Kozlov stood up and opened the door for her. “Sure,” he said. “Simpson will accompany you.”

She rolled her eyes but followed Simpson out anyway. He was out of uniform, wearing a stupid baseball cap as if that would stop him being recognised as a police officer. They got in a car, Jessica folding her arms in the back like a sulky teenager.

“Thanks for the pepper spray in the face, jerkwad.”

“Just following orders.”

They joined the New York traffic, cars honking, lights blaring, citizens and tourists of all stripes crowding the sidewalks. She was surprised that it was still daylight. This had been such a long, shitty day.

She looked at the back of Simpson’s head. “You know your boss is a dick.”

“Kozlov looks at the bigger picture,” Simpson said. “As far as I’m concerned we should lock up you and Kilgrave and throw away the key, but Kozlov sees an opportunity for you to do some good. Don’t screw it up.”

“Aren’t you a small town cop?”

“Wouldn’t call NYC a small town,” he muttered.

“How’d you get mixed up with Kozlov? IGH? It must have been after their facility got shut down.”

“They had a change of direction.”

“What kind of change? Experimenting on prisoners?”

“That’s classified.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course it is.”

And of course he insisted on accompanying her inside the apartment as well, like he didn’t trust her. Well, why should he? She sure as hell didn’t trust him.

She dumped her bag on the desk and called Trish.

“Jessica! Hey. What happened? You said you got Kilgrave – are you safe?”

“I got him,” she said. “But there’s been a… complication.”

Her eyes met Simpson’s as she said that, standing there like her own personal prison guard.

“Complication?”

“His cell on the Raft was destroyed. They’re rebuilding it but I need to… watch over Kilgrave for a while. Make sure he doesn’t cause any trouble.”

She could hear Trish’s disbelief over the phone. “Why?”

“It’s just something I’ve gotta do, okay. For my own peace of mind. I don’t wanna take any risks.”

A pause. “Okay.”

“Anyway, until I’m done you’d better stay away. I’ll call again soon.”

“Jess?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

She ended the call, her lip wobbling. Okay. She’d lied to Trish, but it was okay. Better to not get Trish involved.

She went into her bedroom to pack, trying not to think about anything else. This was a job, she told herself. She was a private eye; she could treat it like any other case. She was going on a trip so she needed a change of clothes, toothbrush, phone charger, wallet… As she grabbed her notebook from her bedside drawer, she noticed something else. Her passport.

She’d gotten it after what had happened last year with Kilgrave. He’d taken her to England for a vacation that had turned into a nightmare. Without the right legal documentation, he’d trapped her there for three awful months.

With the way things were going now, she might need an escape route.  

Jessica tucked the passport into her rucksack, took a couple of headache pills to keep her going, and grabbed the last of her whiskey from the kitchen. The room swayed a bit when she entered; the lack of sleep was catching up with her. She didn’t think being knocked unconscious counted.

“Ready?” Simpson asked.

Well, she’d have to be, wouldn’t she?

*

“I hear you’re to be my captor. No, wait, sorry. _Handler_.”

“Just get us a car,” she said.

Apart from that initial jibe, Kilgrave was strangely quiet. The entire journey felt like they were in a strange bubble. Simpson had dropped her off outside the warehouse to collect Kilgrave while everyone else had evacuated the building. She was the only one who could breathe the same air as him without being vulnerable to his control.

They got on the plane. He placed them in first class which gave them a modicum of privacy away from the other passengers. No one paid them any mind.

Kilgrave stretched his legs and accepted a glass of champagne with a thank you and a lascivious wink at the air hostess.

“You know the first thing I’m going to do when we touch down? Find us somewhere decent to eat. Prison food is awful.”

“Glad you have your priorities straight.”

Jessica was researching Kilgrave’s father. He was a professor of biology, specialising in neurochemistry, neurobiology and diseases afflicting the brain. The website didn’t have a picture. She wondered what had happened to his wife.

Kilgrave looked at her.

“You know this is crap, right?” he said. “They clearly have money and resources. If they know where dear old Mum and Dad are, why don’t they pick them up themselves? Why make us do it?”

“I don’t know. I’m still figuring that out.”

“They wanted us to be together. Why?”

“You can’t control me.”

That at least had an obvious answer. It was why they had tested her immunity first.

“What do they want with my parents?”

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t think Kilgrave would react well to the idea that they were developing an inoculation against him. So far he’d cooperated because fresh air was better than a prison cell, or so she assumed. She didn’t want him to be difficult.

“They made me what I am.” He swallowed. “This is transport, isn’t it? You’re delivering me to another lab, so I can be their rat in a trap.”

“No.”

“You did it once already. You betrayed me.”

She put her cell phone down in her lap and glared at him. “Will you stop being a whiny little bitch? I’m not gonna apologise. I wanted you back where you belong. In prison.”

“I belong in a prison cell and you don’t? You’re a hypocrite. You always have been.”

“Yeah, well, life isn’t fair. Get over it.”

He paused. “You’ve changed.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You used to have hope. Or you wanted to anyway, even when you couldn’t find it.”

“Well, congratulations on crushing that out of me.”

“What if I run, once we’ve landed? What if I escape and never bother you again?”

“I’ll catch you and crush your windpipe for real,” she told him.

Strangely, this answer seemed to please him. He settled back in his seat, resting his head. “All right then. Together it is.”

*

They landed in Boston. The weather was 25°C and sunny. At the airport Kilgrave walked over to a guy in a sunhat and flip-flops and held out his hand.

“You want to give me your phone.”

The guy handed it over with a smile and Jessica rolled her eyes. Kilgrave wasn’t supposed to have a phone or access to any device. But really, what harm could it do?

They got in a cab and went to the nearest fancy restaurant as promised, Kilgrave tapping away at his phone while they waited for their meals. She was too tired to grab his parents tonight and besides, she was famished. She’d ordered herself some wine, figuring that the easiest way to get through this was not to be sober.

Dining with Kilgrave. Same old, same old.

This place had its own aquarium with brightly-coloured fish swimming back and forth and crabs nestled in the vegetation. She wondered if they plucked them out of the water and cooked them alive. There was that saying about frogs and slowly boiling. Maybe they did the same thing with crabs. That hard shell wouldn’t protect them. Stick ‘em in hot water and they’d never escape.

“Oh, my,” said Kilgrave, distracting her. “That’s some questionable internet history.”

“Can’t be as freaky as the shit you’re into.”

“You once literally called me vanilla.”

She looked around, feeling more and more uncomfortable. A lady in a beautiful red gown was seated not too far away from them, her hair pinned up with a silver brooch that caught the candlelight. She’d probably catch Kilgrave’s eye, especially with that low-cut neckline.

Things she had to worry about again. Kilgrave was looking directly at her for now, an amused glint in his eyes. Vanilla?

She shook her head. “Mind control isn’t vanilla.”

“True. Shame I can’t use it on you. Well, apart from that one time…”

Her stomach dropped. She looked away, feeling sick. “Don’t.”

“Ah ha,” he said. “Thought so. Look at this.”

He shoved the phone screen in her face and for a second she thought he was trying to show her whatever weird porn the guy was into, but instead she was looking at the University of Massachusetts website. It was a profile of one of its faculty members: Dr. Deborah Hargreaves.

She frowned, the cogs whirring in her brain.

“Deborah? She…”

“Works at the same university as dear old Dad,” Kilgrave finished for her. “How’s that for super sleuthing? Maybe I should be the P.I.”

Right, she thought. That wasn’t a coincidence. God, she really was tired. She should have figured that one out the second Kozlov had told her that Kilgrave’s parents were in Boston.

“That’s how IGH knew about your father,” she realised. “Mallory worked for IGH. She probably met them through Deborah. Maybe you shouldn’t have killed her.”

“She kept that one quiet,” Kilgrave admitted. “Wasn’t exactly an obvious topic. I was more interested in finding you.”

“What about Deborah? You controlled her too.”

“She doesn’t know anything. Had no idea about IGH or what her mother really did. But she must know my father. I say we pay her a visit.”

She’d had a missed call from Deborah from when she’d been trapped in the lab with Kilgrave so she knew that Deborah was alive. Jessica hadn’t called her back. What was she supposed to say?

She pursed her lips. “No killing. You don’t touch her, you don’t harm her. You don’t harm anyone, got it?”

“As my handler commands.”

The mocking tone in his voice was faint, but she heard it. Jessica scowled. He’d do what he wanted like he always did. She’d knock some sense into him if and when he misbehaved. Just like old times.

*

They went to a hotel. Jessica had left a message for Deborah, telling her that she’d had a breakthrough in the case and she wanted to meet tomorrow morning. Until then, they needed somewhere to stay for the night.

She’d dreaded this part.

“A room for two,” said Kilgrave, employing his charm as usual to get what he wanted.

“A double,” Jessica corrected him.

He looked at her. “Double bed? Well, if you insist…”

She gnashed her teeth. “We are not sharing. Tell him to get us a double or I’ll knock your teeth out.”

In the hotel room he stretched out on one of the beds, pearly whites intact. They’d gotten a twin room. Even that didn’t make her feel safe. He’d be a couple of feet away from her, within touching distance. She sat down on the other bed, warily, like it might rise up and swallow her.

“Let’s run away,” he said. “Forget IGH, forget finding my parents. We can escape together.”

“No.” She paused. “I thought you wanted to find them.”

He’d searched for them once. Years ago, before they’d met.

“That was then, this is now. I don’t want to see them.”

“Why not? They’re your parents.”

“You don’t know them; I do. They tortured me and then they left me on my own. I was ten.”

Yes, Kilgrave had told her that too. It was the single thing that explained so much of Kilgrave’s life. Abandoned as a child, scared and alone, and with the mind control powers that would turn him into a tyrant.

She looked at him. “Kozlov said that your parents loved you. They weren’t torturing you, they were trying to save you. You were a sick kid, you had some kind of brain disease… If not for them you’d be dead.”

“Dead?” He cocked his head. “No, I wasn’t dying. If I was in pain, it was because of all the drugs they forced into me. And you want me to go back to that.”

“Are you sure?”

He paused. “What do you mean?”

“You were a kid. Maybe you didn’t understand what was happening to you.”

“I know that it hurt,” he said, and she could see the memory of the pain in his eyes. “I know that I didn’t feel loved. I don’t want to see them, Jessica. I don’t want to relive it.”

“It’s just once,” she said. “Then you never have to see them again.”

“Then I go back to my cell.”

She said nothing.

“That’s right, isn’t it? This isn’t freedom. This is forced labour.”

“Oh, boo fucking hoo.” He was the last person to talk about forced labour. “Think of it as community service. I didn’t volunteer for this either.”

He sat up and swung his legs over towards her, leaning forward with his hands resting on the edge of the mattress. He’d taken off his jacket, undone the top button of his shirt. She didn’t like any of that, and she especially didn’t like the way his eyes burned into her.

“Then why are you here?”

“Someone has to keep an eye on you.”

“And it had to be you. I’m confused. What exactly is your motivation here? Are they paying you? Threatening you?”

She kept her voice steady. “I’m here to get your parents and get out. That’s it.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there? Jessica, if we’re going to get out of this alive, we can’t keep secrets from one another. IGH are not the good guys here. I’ve told you already, whatever they want with my parents, it’s bad. You can’t trust them.”

She didn’t trust either of them; that was the problem. Not Kozlov with his shady threats and vague promises, and certainly not Kilgrave. How could she do the right thing when she didn’t know who was right and who was wrong?

What would Trish do?

_Trish, Trish, it’s always about Trish. Can’t you make any decisions for yourself?_

He always saw straight through her.

She passed a hand over her eyes. “Look, I’m tired. If you’re right and IGH are up to no good, I’ll stop them. Until then I am not letting you out of my sight. Go to sleep.”

To her relief, he didn’t object.

*

The next morning Jessica splashed water on her face and wished that she’d drank a little less wine. Her eyes weren’t quite bloodshot, but there were deep shadows and she had a buzzing headache that wouldn’t go away.

She’d slept badly. It couldn’t have gone any other way with Kilgrave nearby. She’d tossed and turned and gone through a hundred implausible scenarios of what Kozlov and IGH might be up to, and wished that she could talk to Trish. But she didn’t want to contact her while Kilgrave was around.

What if Kilgrave was right? She’d be helping to create an evil far worse than him. He’d planted doubts in her mind and she couldn’t shake them.

What else could she do?

She dressed and emerged from the bathroom to find Kilgrave still finishing his croissant. He’d been like this every meal, savouring each mouthful. She wasn’t going to pity the bastard.

“Get up,” she said. “We’re going.”

“That was gorgeous,” he said, wiping the crumbs off his shirt. “Buttery heaven.”

Should she be troubled that he’d behaved so far? She didn’t know, but she wasn’t complaining. Anything that made her life easier. Deborah had invited her to her office on campus and Kilgrave found a driver to take them there.

The office, it turned out, was more of a cramped study. The window was open but it still smelled faintly of damp. Kilgrave walked in, wrinkled his nose, and ordered the other woman occupying one of the two desks to scarper, which she promptly did. Deborah was seated at the other desk which was a mess of papers, books, empty cups of coffee and various knickknacks – she appeared to have a fondness for cat-themed ornaments and, Jessica noted with secret triumph, several pictures of fluffy cats on the wall. So her instincts hadn’t been entirely wrong.

“Oh!” said Deborah, standing up as Jessica walked in behind Kilgrave. “You’re finally here, I was so nervous waiting for you, I…”

“Shut up,” said Kilgrave. “Sit down, stay calm and answer our questions with complete honesty.”

Deborah did so and Jessica had to admire his efficiency. Again, strangely cooperative.

“I know what happened to your mother,” said Jessica, because she had to do Deborah the courtesy of telling her that first. “I’m sorry, it’s not good news. She died. It was an accident out at sea.”

Kilgrave glanced at her and she wanted badly to tell Deborah that this asshole standing in front of them had murdered her mother, but she held her tongue. Meanwhile, Deborah looked faintly surprised, but didn’t say anything. This puzzled Jessica until she remembered Kilgrave’s orders.

Right. She was staying calm. She wouldn’t be able to feel grief for her mother until after they’d gone. Well, maybe that was for the best.

“Look, her company knows what happened so they’ll send you a full report,” Jessica went on. “Right now… I need your help on a different case. Do you know a Professor Arthur Hawkes?”

It was the fake name that Albert Thompson was using for his post here.

“My grandmother’s maiden name,” said Kilgrave. “In case you were wondering.”

Deborah’s eyes lit up in recognition. “Sure, he’s a colleague. Do you need to talk to him?”

“Yeah. Can we see him?”

Deborah frowned. “I don’t know if he’s available now… Sorry, let me check.”

She turned to her computer to look something up, and Jessica shared a glance with Kilgrave. He was leaning against the other empty desk and he’d found a bright green stress ball, squeezing it in his palm.

“Grandmother’s maiden name, huh?” she said. “You were close?”

She didn’t know anything about the rest of his family. Did he have any?

“No,” said Kilgrave. “I found them when I was trying to track down my parents. Thought they might be hiding there.”

“Found him,” said Deborah, distracting Jessica from a very unpleasant train of thought. “I thought so. Professor Hawkes is away at a neuroscience conference this week. He’s in Toronto, Canada.”

 _Canada?_ She looked again at Kilgrave. Shit.

“When is he coming back?” Kilgrave asked.

“Um, he’s due back in three days.”

“What about his wife? Did she go with him?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s their home address?”

“I don’t know.”

Kilgrave threw away the stress ball in irritation, standing up. “Okay, then who does know?”

“HR, I guess.”

“Hold up,” said Jessica, lifting her hand. She was still trying to process the fact that Albert Thompson was in Canada. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

She waved him out of the office and Kilgrave followed her, raising an eyebrow. Once out in the corridor he folded his arms and tilted his head at her. “What?”

“I thought you didn’t want to find your parents. You seem awfully eager to track them down.”

That eyebrow lifted a little higher. “I’m sorry, are you complaining about me being helpful now?”

“You never do anything you don’t want to. What’s in this for you?”

“Maybe I like spending time with you.”

The way he said it, sincere and straightforward, caught her off-guard. The second she’d heard that he’d escaped, she’d thought that he was coming to reclaim her but he had hardly alluded to their previous relationship beyond the occasional sly remark.

“Well,” he continued since she remained dumbfounded, “looks like we have a trip to Canada on the cards. The perfect getaway, don’t you think?”

“We are not going to Canada,” she said sharply.

It might be harder for IGH to follow them to Canada. It might be out of the Raft’s jurisdiction, which of course explained why Kilgrave was a fan of the idea.

“Wait it out then,” he said. “We could go to my parents’ house, surprise them when they get back… Sounds cosy.”

Oh, God. Those were her options? She hadn’t wanted to spend a single night with Kilgrave, let alone three. She turned away, putting her hands on her hips and breathing fast. _Okay. Think._

“Jessica.” She could feel his gaze on her. His voice sliding over her skin. “What’s it to be?”


	5. not going out

Three days. Was this her own personal hell? Did the world want her to suffer?

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said. “You do not leave this apartment. You don’t speak to anyone, you don’t use your powers and you don’t piss me off.”

Albert and Louise lived just outside the university campus on the second floor of an apartment block that was mostly occupied by students. Kilgrave had gotten the address and she’d broken in. The perfect team.

She closed the door behind her and looked at Kilgrave who was already walking around, taking the place in.

“That last one might be hard,” he said. “Sometimes I think I piss you off just by existing.”

“Sometimes you do.” She shrugged. “Let’s take a look around. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

There was no one at home which meant that Albert and Louise had gone to the conference together. That was one piece of new information. As for what else they might learn… She’d know when she found it.

They did a joint sweep: Jessica checked the lounge and bedroom while Kilgrave did the kitchen and bathroom. The apartment itself was small and sparsely furnished with décor that looked like it had never made it out of the nineties. She started in the lounge, scanning a bookcase full of scientific textbooks. Very little light reading. It had a drawer at the bottom which she rifled through, finding some old car magazines, a board game and a couple of blankets. Other than that, they had a TV, a threadbare couch and armchair, a glass coffee table and a fluffy brown rug.

She investigated the bedroom next, noting with a sinking feeling that this was the only room to sleep in. No spare bed. Putting that thought aside, she searched the wardrobe, chest of drawers and under the bed, finding nothing of interest. Then in the drawer of their bedside table she found a metal case small enough to fit into the palm of her hand. It was locked but Jessica broke it open with a quick snap.

Something yellow and plastic fell out. Jessica picked it up. A USB flash drive.

Well, that might be interesting.

“Jessica,” Kilgrave called. “I found something.”

She went over to the kitchen where Kilgrave was pointing to a stack of envelopes on the counter. He held out one of the letters and Jessica took it.

It wasn’t a letter. It was a printout of a receipt and itinerary for a flight. Not the trip to Canada. Somewhere much further.

“Moscow,” she read. “Your parents are going to Russia.”

He nodded. “Next week. They’re real jetsetters.”

She looked again at the itinerary. “No return flight. It’s a one way trip. Why would they be going to Russia?”

It troubled her. Maybe they’d heard about Kilgrave escaping. Maybe they’d guessed that IGH were after them, and they planned to flee. Or it could be a coincidence. Maybe one of them had been offered a job.

He shrugged. “No idea. Did you find anything?”

She showed him the flash drive. “Do you recognise this?”

He shook his head. Jessica grabbed her laptop and went over to the coffee table to open it, Kilgrave following her. She ignored him hovering over her shoulder and inserted the USB drive.

“Password protected.”

She sighed, sitting back. It wouldn’t let her access any of the folders.

“Well, we can solve that in a few days,” said Kilgrave. “I can get the password. I’ll find out what’s going on with this move to Russia too.”

Right. He could. As soon as his parents returned home, he could pry out as many secrets as he wanted. She shut the laptop and tucked the flash drive away. For now, she’d keep it.

“So,” said Kilgrave. “What do we do now?”

“We wait.”   

“Okay,” he said carefully. “And what are you going to do? Sit in here with me all day? You’re a P.I., you should be investigating IGH while you still have a chance.”

“How?” she snapped. “I’ve got my hands full babysitting you.”

He moved around in front of her, gesturing at the door. She’d have to watch him, she thought. It wouldn’t take long for him to slip outside and escape.

“I could come with you.”

“I already told you, you do not leave–”

“I do not leave this apartment,” he sighed, interrupting her. “Yes, I heard you the first time. Lock me in if you have to. I’m used to it.”

“I need a drink,” she said abruptly, standing up.

That was when she found the flaw in her plan. No booze. Albert and Louise had one half-empty bottle of wine in their fridge. She’d get through that in a day, and then what?

“Shit,” Jessica muttered, pouring herself a glass.

“One for me?” Kilgrave asked, joining her.

She scowled, but poured him a drink too. Maybe it would make him more bearable.

“What about food? There’s not much left.”

“There’ll be enough.”

She wasn’t sure though. If they ran out of basic necessities… well, tough shit. They’d be miserable for three days but that was always going to be the case anyway. She went back to the lounge and Kilgrave followed her again. She rolled her eyes, digging her earbuds out of her bag so that she could listen to music and ignore him, but he’d already settled down next to her on the couch.  

“I think we should talk.”

She knew she would regret responding. “Talk about what?”

“Us.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You know that’s not true.”

She looked at him. “I thought you came to me because you wanted my help.”

“I do. But since you’re refusing to give it and we’ve got three days to kill…”

She shook her head, turning away to reach for her phone.

“Jessica–”

She saw him lean forward out of the corner of her eye. He looked frustrated, his eyes pleading. He reached out. His hand touched her calf and she recoiled as if she’d been bitten, jerking away.  

“Don’t touch me!” She hated how shaken she sounded. “You do not get to come anywhere near me, got it? Not now, not ever.”

He looked surprised, slowly moving his hand back to clasp in his lap. “Why?”

She’d felt that touch. How easy it had been for him, how natural. He always used to touch her, a possessive hand on her shoulder, a brush of his lips on her cheek or in her hair, his arms around her waist, his body flush against hers, always backing her into a corner, finding new and interesting ways to make her squirm.

“Because you’re a piece of shit and you make my skin crawl,” she told him. “This conversation is over.”

He opened his mouth but she ignored him. The music blocked him out.

*

Several hours later, Jessica was feeling terribly sober and Kilgrave’s eyes glittered. The empty bottle stood on the coffee table between them. She’d been through this playlist that Trish had created for her three times. It was all grunge rock and girl power pop, the kind of music that Trish worked out to, bold and aggressive. The reality outside her ears was a damp squib in comparison. Kilgrave hadn’t done much. He’d turned on the TV, used the bathroom a couple of times, eaten.

She set her phone aside with a sigh and got up to stretch, cracking her bones. Kilgrave looked up at her.

“Let’s play a game,” he said.

“I hate games.”

“No, you don’t. Let’s play truth or dare.”

God, he was insufferable. But she was bored too. It wasn’t a normal kind of boredom either. It was boredom that she’d only experienced with Kilgrave, that sense of being trapped in a room with a dangerous animal and having nothing to do but wait it out. She couldn’t relax; she couldn’t let her guard down. It was fucking tedious.   

“Fine,” she said. “You pick first.”

“Dare.”

“I dare you to go next door and bring me all the booze you can find.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You’re letting me out?”

“Not unsupervised. I’ll come with you.”

The apartment complex had several other residents. Their first two knocks were unsuccessful, but the third opened the door to reveal a long-haired guy already with a beer can in hand. Perfect.

They returned to the lounge with two packs of beer, a bottle of whiskey and two bottles of rum.

“Well, I hope you’re happy,” said Kilgrave.

“Better than I was. Beer?”

He shook his head.

“I forgot you were funny about drinking.”

“It’s called having taste–”

“It’s called being a snob.” She opened the beer. Frankly, she didn’t care how cheap it was. “My turn, right? I pick truth.”

“What are you not telling me about IGH?”

She opened her mouth and then closed it again. Oh, so this wasn’t a game. He was using it to find out answers.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Liar. You picked truth, not lie.”

“Fine then, dare.”

“I dare you to take off your shirt.”

Of course he went there. She was wearing a long-sleeved loose shirt and jeans despite the summer weather because she knew that his preference would be to put her in a dress. Jessica adjusted her collar, undoing her top button and Kilgrave’s gaze shifted to the soft hollow of her throat.

Her lip curled. “It must have been so hard for you in prison without any company. Did the prison guards give you a good time?”

“Take your shirt off and I’ll tell you.”

The retort was swift, his eyes dark, and Jessica was already regretting the joke. If he had been violated in prison, would she care? Wouldn’t he of all people deserve it?

She shook her head. “You want to know more about IGH? They’re responsible for both of our powers. Kozlov told me. They had a treatment that saved my life after the car crash. Your parents adapted that treatment to cure you.”

“So my parents were working for IGH too?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think there was anything official. Obviously they don’t work together anymore.”

“What do they want with us now?”

“I don’t know. That’s the truth.” She pointed her beer at him. “Your turn.”

His forehead wrinkled. “All right. Truth.”

“What are you not telling me about your time in jail?”

“Well, there was that great time I had bending over a prison guard…” She made a face and he shook his head. “The truth is, I never saw any guards. Not their faces, anyway. If they ever came in, they’d be wearing hazard suits. Sometimes they gave me an anaesthetic. But I wasn’t always on my own. One of the first experiments they did was testing my mind control on human subjects. They put other prisoners in the cell with me.”

She drew a sharp breath. “What?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “They were your average delinquents, deadbeats and the like. Threw them in just to see what I’d do. I tried not to give any orders, I suspected what they were doing, but…”

“You got bored.”

“I got irritated. Isolation is bad enough, but sharing a cell with an unwashed thug? No, thank you. So I stopped them bothering me. And they didn’t stop me. They let me do whatever I wanted. I told a man to cut himself with a razor, and they didn’t stop me. They only acted when I tried to escape.”

“Did you kill them?”

He looked at her steadily. “Your turn.”

She hissed through her teeth. “Truth.”

“Did you miss me?”

“No.”

“Did you think about me while I was gone?”

“No.”

“Really? Not once? I thought about you.”

Simpson had said he was obsessed, she recalled. Had he spent all that time missing her? Or had he been plotting revenge? She couldn’t tell. The look in his eyes was unfathomable, Kilgrave resting with his cheek against the back of the couch. She shifted, taking a swig of her beer.

“I thought you might escape,” she admitted. “Look how that turned out. Your turn.”

“Truth.”

“Did you kill them?”

“Did I kill who?”

“The prisoners. The ones who were put in your cell with you.”

“Some of them died. Some didn’t. IGH didn’t care, that’s my point. IGH, the Raft, whoever it was, they put prisoners in my cell and they let them die.”

“You mean they let you kill them.”

He spread his hands. “If that’s how you want to look at it. But I wasn’t the one who decided they were disposable.”

One more black mark against the Raft. If she believed him, that is, which she didn’t. On the other hand, maybe it did fit with Kozlov’s plan to create an inoculation against Kilgrave. They couldn’t do that without testing his mind control, could they? What if they’d put other prisoners inside his cell to test their immunity?

If Kilgrave turned out to be telling the truth this time, she was going to be incredibly annoyed.

“Okay,” she said. “Truth.”

“Did you ever come to see me?”

“No.”

“Really?”

His face fell. His disappointment was palpable. She sighed. “I came once. I had to make sure you were really locked up.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“I know. I didn’t want you to.”

“Why not?”

She’d observed Kilgrave from behind a one-way mirror. He’d been there in his cell and she’d been able to watch him without his knowledge. It had been for the best, she thought. Talking to Kilgrave… Well, talking to Kilgrave was a great way of getting sucked in by him.

She looked away. “Okay, I’m done. Let’s call it a night.”

He glanced at the bedroom. “Well then…”

“No,” she said.

“I haven’t even said anything–”

“I know you. You think with your dick. You always have.”

Obviously he’d noticed their situation too. He hadn’t said anything, but…

“I was going to suggest that I take the couch,” he said stiffly. “You can have the bed.”

Oh.

She thought about it. “No.”

He raised his eyebrows. “No?”

“I’ll take the couch.” It was closer to the exit. She didn’t want him running off. “You take the bed.”

“You really don’t have to, I’m perfectly happy on the couch…”

“Don’t pretend to be a gentleman,” she said shortly. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“All right then,” he said, getting up. “Let me know if you change your mind. Good night, Jessica.”

She didn’t say it back.

*

She woke up with a headache, the ticking of the clock on the wall reverberating in her ears. Other than that, the room was strangely quiet, none of the usual din from the New York traffic.

Right. She wasn’t in New York.

She sat up and rubbed at the crick in her neck. There was Kilgrave standing across from her in the kitchen area, drumming his fingers on the counter. Great.

He looked up and grinned. “Morning. Look, I made the kettle boil!”

Sure enough, the kettle was bubbling, steam rising out of it. He looked ridiculously happy to have achieved this feat.

Jessica shook her head and went to the bathroom. She peed, washed her face, and padded back to the kitchen to see how he was getting on. Kilgrave was peering at a bag of coffee granules like he’d never set eyes on them before. He probably hadn’t.

“So do I put the boiling water in first and then the coffee? How much? And when does the milk go in?”

He had a milk carton ready, and a coffee mug.

“Jesus,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

She grabbed a mug out of the cupboard for herself too, and shook the coffee granules in.

“No, no, I want to do it. Coffee then water, yeah? Then the milk?”

“Knock yourself out.”

She turned away to investigate the contents of the fridge. Nothing too exciting. This wasn’t a pizza sort of household. But she grabbed a yoghurt and then watched Kilgrave stir the coffee with a look on his face like an excited little kid.

“Is this really the first time you’ve made your own coffee?”

“I think so, yeah. Always had someone else do it for me.”

“Yeah. I remember.”

She took the mug he offered her and blew on it.

“So,” he said. “Day two. Did you sleep well?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, that didn’t look too comfortable.”

“The couch was fine,” she said. “I don’t sleep well with an escaped convict in the house. Especially not a serial killer.”

She was three nights and counting on the bad sleep front. No wonder she felt like shit. She put her mug down and switched to eating the yoghurt. Kilgrave watched her, taking occasional sips of his coffee. The kitchen area was small; they were on opposite sides but there wasn’t a lot of room between them. Just enough that she didn’t feel the urge to flee.

“So you’ve been keeping tabs on me,” he said. “No need. I slept like a baby. What’s the plan for today?”

“Same as yesterday. Sit tight. Don’t be a dumbass.”

“Right, yes, ma’am.” He smiled. “I could get used to this. You giving me orders. Taking charge.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Jessica Jones as my prison guard,” he went on. “We would’ve had a lot more fun if you’d been there to supervise me, wouldn’t we, darling?”

He was trying to provoke her. She knew that, but she couldn’t help herself. “Don’t call me that.”

“What, darling? I’ve called you that before. Honey. Sweetheart. Sugarplum.”

She gritted her teeth and marched away from him, back to the couch where she slumped down and took a big gulp of her coffee, scalding her tongue. He followed, sitting down at the other end, and she instinctively recoiled and then felt annoyed with herself for doing so. She wasn’t afraid of him. He was a fly buzzing around her. Nothing more.

“Jessie-kins,” he continued. “Kitten. Did I ever call you kitten? Or was that…?”

Some other poor woman forced to be his pet. She looked around for the remote. Anything to drown him out.

“Kitten doesn’t quite capture it. You’re a panther. All that velvety black hair. Remember how I used to stroke your hair?”

She’d turned on some trashy daytime TV and he hadn’t missed a beat. He was gazing at her with something like nostalgia.

She glared back. “Say one more thing I don’t like and I’ll break your nose.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m teasing, Jessica. Lighten up.”

She drew her hand back into a fist and to her satisfaction he flinched away. The rest of the morning passed in irritable silence, with that same tense boredom choking the atmosphere. She did another search of the apartment, just to be safe. She watched TV.

The entire time she could sense Kilgrave watching her. Planning his next move.

“You know,” he said, “I think we stopped too early last night. There was more I wanted to tell you.”

“If it’s some crap about your feelings for me, don’t bother.” She cracked open the bottle of rum. Whatever he was going to say, she probably needed it.

“Why not? Are you afraid, Jessica?”

She snorted. He sat up, and he wasn’t at all like the shadowy figure in her dreams. He’d made no attempt to escape, she told herself, because he was a pathetic coward and she was stronger than him.

“Not of me, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “Afraid of yourself.”

“Do you ever stop with your bullshit?”

“You’re afraid of your own feelings. Afraid of what it means. You know something’s going to happen here.”

“In your delusional head, maybe.”

She shouldn’t listen to him, she knew that. He had plenty of tricks; this was another one.

He frowned. “I know it’s not just me. Look, I’ll prove it.”

He got out his phone and tapped the screen.

She was sceptical. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

He showed her. It was one of the photos from his gallery, uploaded from the cloud. A picture of… A picture of her. A framed photograph that she’d taken on a bright winter’s day in Hyde Park, her cheeks red from the cold, wearing a joyful smile. That felt like a Jessica from long ago.

She didn’t know what to say.

“I found it,” said Kilgrave. “I went back to the house we lived in to retrieve it and I found it in the basement. They must have thought it had been left behind by the previous owners. I was going to give it to you when you came to see me.”

But then she’d knocked him out and had him dragged back to IGH instead. So he hadn’t had the chance.

“Do you remember that photograph? It was a Christmas present.”

Yes, she remembered. She’d made a special effort to take the perfect picture, something just for him. He’d been so happy.

“That was before,” she said. “Before all the shit you pulled. Why are you showing me this?”

“To remind you that it wasn’t all bad. That we had something before you ruined it.”  

“Before _I_ ruined it?”

“Yes,” he said. “You hurt me, Jessica. You’ve betrayed my trust at every turn. Because of you, I suffered a year of hell. Do you have any idea how often I thought about making you pay? What could Jessica Jones possibly suffer that would match even a fraction of the pain I’ve been through since you turned me in.”

So he had thought about revenge. The twisted bastard, she thought, the anger suddenly rising in her. That picture – that was a cheap trick. That was unfair. She drained her glass and stood up.

“You think I don’t suffer? You think just because I’m not in jail, I’m not trapped like you? I have nightmares about you, Kilgrave. I relive everything you tormented me with in my dreams every night. I hear your voice–”

She stopped, pursing her lips. She’d said too much. Kilgrave got up too, facing her. The mood had shifted. It was tense, heavy, like the pressure of an approaching storm.

“Nightmares?” he said. “Nightmares aren’t real. Do you think your nightmares are in any way comparable to the real living hell of life in the same six square metres of an underwater cube, in complete isolation every hour of every day, oh except for the occasional therapy session or experiment where they prod and poke me like an animal, and all that time knowing that no sentence was ever passed, no justice has been served, there’s just this, this box, and maybe this is where you’re going to die!”

He stopped, breathing hard. She couldn’t speak. That tirade, those words had poured out of him like a dam bursting, and they’d shaken her.

“I don’t want to go back,” he said. “I’m asking you one more time, _please_. If you ever cared for me, Jessica, if you ever felt anything for me… Help me.”

There was a long moment of silence. They stared at each other and she was trying, she was trying so hard to squash any sympathy she might have felt. Of course he’d suffered in prison. That was the point. He’d killed dozens, probably hundreds of people, without a second thought; he’d enslaved innocent people in their own homes; he’d raped an endless string of women, all without any remorse, and the things he’d done to her, the things he’d made her do–

_Except I didn’t make you, did I? You had free will. That’s what really scares you, Jessica. This darkness inside you._

She took a deep, shaky breath. “I think we need to calm down.”

She took her empty glass and returned to the kitchen. After a moment, Kilgrave followed her. Jessica turned her back on him and rinsed the glass under the faucet, keeping her eyes on the wash basin. She needed to collect herself.

“You’re right,” she said. “You’re going back to a terrible place. You should have thought about that before you decided to spend your life murdering people and turning them into your slaves.” She turned around to face him, raising her hand before he could respond. “But we’ve got two more days of hanging around with nothing to do until your parents come back. Maybe we could take a break. We can go out somewhere in Boston, do whatever you want as long as it’s legal, and try to forget this shitshow we’re both in. What do you say?”

“Take a break,” he repeated. The look he gave her was a suspicious one. “We can do whatever I want?”

“I get a veto,” she said quickly. “You have to prove that I can trust you.”

He nodded slowly, looking thoughtful. “Okay.”   

*

She was soft, maybe. Showing him even an inch of mercy. But this was for herself as much as it was for him; if she stayed here she’d drink herself into a stupor and she couldn’t afford to let her guard down. She needed him to behave and if he thought that he had a chance of getting back in her good books, maybe that would incentivise him.

And if he escaped, well, then he’d be someone else’s problem.

Besides, Kilgrave was never short of ideas for what to do. He’d dragged her around enough tourist traps for her to know that.

They walked around some of the Freedom Trail, the irony of which wasn’t lost on her, and then wandered the cobbled streets of the North End where they ate at an Italian restaurant. It was another bright, sunny day and she had to admit that the fresh breeze was a relief after the time they’d spent cooped up indoors.

As for Kilgrave… She kept watching him for signs of shifty behaviour. Nothing yet.

The afternoon was drawing on and they’d entered the Old North Church when she asked the question. “Why don’t you try to run?”

They were sitting in the front row. The pews were white and so were the plaster walls. It was a place to be quiet and contemplate. Kilgrave was quiet too, looking at the cross in front of the altar.

He blinked at her question, giving her a quizzical look. “Didn’t you say you’d catch me and, what was it, crush my windpipe?”

“Well, yeah, but…” She’d still expected him to try.

“Have you enjoyed today?”

She frowned. “Enjoyed?”

“Don’t say it like you don’t know the word. Did you have fun?”

Oh, now she got it. Jessica shook her head. “This wasn’t a date. This was me trying not to go stir-crazy trapped in a room with you.”

Trying to get away from the voices in her head. Trying to do something different. She wasn’t religious, not really, but the sun had been beating down on them all day and the church was pleasantly cool.

“I suppose that’s better than nothing.” Kilgrave wrinkled his nose as a couple of tourists and their two children approached down the aisle, cooing at the architecture. “I thought we’d get some peace and quiet in here.” He stood up and raised his voice. “Everybody out!”

Jessica sighed, rolling her eyes as the church emptied. “I told you not to use your powers. What, you want to raid the gift shop?”

“No, I want a moment with you.”

He held out his hand. She ignored him, standing up herself and moving back into the aisle. If he was going to be an ass, then she’d make him leave.

“Jessica. Come on. Can’t we have a moment?”

She turned back. He was standing in front of the altar, one hand resting on the top of the pew. “What do you mean, a moment?”

“Just for us. Not trapped in that fusty apartment.” He put his hands in his pockets and sighed. “Jessica, I’ve been trying so hard to get through to you.”

She tensed. He was working up to something.

“I think you know that doing what Kozlov wants is a bad idea,” he went on. “I think you know that, but you’re doing it anyway. I won’t pretend to know what he has on you, but I’m assuming that he does have something. So I want you to know that I understand. I understand if you’ve been forced into this as much as I have. I can forgive you for that.”

“I’m not asking for forgiveness.”

“No, but I’m offering it.” He took a step closer. “And I’d like to ask a favour of you.”

Her heart was thumping like mad. He’d sent all the other visitors away – why?

“Can we say a final goodbye?” He reached out to brush her cheek. “Can we be together one last time?”

She took a step back too late. His touch had already lingered. Jessica swallowed the lump in her throat.  

“I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can.”

She shook her head. “No – I don’t want to do that.”

“I’ve missed you, Jessica.” His voice was so soft. He’d come closer again, his hand reaching for hers, his gaze unwavering. She could melt into those eyes. She felt the danger of him, not his powers or his words, but _him_ , the grip he still had on her heart and her soul. “I want to touch you. I want to kiss you.”

“No.”

“Consider it the last wish of a doomed man.”

“No.”

She whispered it. She barely got the word out. But she was holding out.

A small frown creased his brow. “You said I could do whatever I want.”

“I said I would get a veto.”

“Jessica, I love you.”

_I love you._

He’d forced her to say it, over and over again. To whisper it, to cry it, to murmur into his ear, to taste it on his skin.

And just like that, the spell was broken.

She shoved him away. “You don’t love me! You have no idea what love is. You don’t even know when to back off, you goddamn–”

“Oh, shut up!” He bristled back at her instantly. “You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you? That I don’t understand love, like it’s some mystery to me.”

“You’re a psychopath. Psychopaths don’t feel love.”

“Well, then, I’m not a psychopath because I do feel it. I had nine chances to escape today. I counted them. I could have gotten on a plane and gone far away from this wretched country and never seen you again. I could have been free. But here I am standing here as your willing captive. Because that’s the truth of how I feel about you.” 

“If that were true, then you never would have controlled me! You forced me to be with you. You made me hurt the people I care about. I almost killed Trish because of you. I _begged_ you, Kilgrave, I begged you to stop and you didn’t. You proved that all of this is bullshit a long time ago.”

The truth meant nothing to him. Her truth, anyone else’s truth. He’d never recognised anyone’s reality but his own. She was breathing hard, tears threatening to form in her eyes, and aware that she was standing in a church and cursing in a holy place, even if there was no one else around to see it.

He stared at her. All the warmth had left his eyes. “You know I’m going to have you one way or another, don’t you?”

She said nothing.

“If you won’t take control, then I will. That’s how it is with us.” He shook his head. “I think we’d better go.”

*

By the time they got back to the apartment, she was exhausted. She grabbed the whiskey and drank it straight from the bottle before slumping down on the couch. Kilgrave said nothing. He’d switched the TV on and seemed content to ignore her. Fine. She didn’t want to deal with… whatever had happened earlier anyway. It had been stupid to go out in the first place. Like she wanted him to escape.

_Well, maybe you do._

Instead he’d apparently decided that fucking her was more important than his own freedom which was so fucking stupid and she wished she had some words to form to yell at him for that, but she didn’t.

As the television blared, her eyes began to itch and the dull pounding behind her eyes worsened. Another sleepless night, she thought. Albert and Louise were due back the next evening. She wouldn’t be able to last much longer.

She finished the last of the whiskey, put it down, and yawned. Her limbs felt heavy, her head tangled with barbed wire.

Kilgrave came over. “Jessica. I need to tell you something.”

“What?” she mumbled.

Her head lolled. He picked up the blanket and tucked it around her, leaning in to stroke her hair. She was too sleepy to protest.

“Like velvet,” he murmured. “Relax. Go to sleep.”

He gently shifted her, moving the cushion so that her head rested on it, like she had done when she’d slept on the couch. He must be sitting next to her; she could feel the weight of him but she couldn’t focus. The drowsiness was hitting hard, weighing down her every muscle. His voice was a soothing balm on her cheek.

“I knew I’d need a contingency if you didn’t listen to me today, Jessica. So, I spiked your drink. I’d take you with me if I could. The two of us travelling together beneath the open sky. That dream is what kept me going all those nights I was trapped in a box, alone. Someday you’ll understand. Until then…”

She was barely conscious. Her eyelids fluttered shut. She felt the press of his lips on her mouth, a tingling in her skin where his fingertips touched.

“Goodbye, Jessica.”

And like a dream, he retreated.


	6. surprise!

She woke with a splitting headache. Then she remembered what had happened and ripped the blanket away, sitting up with a jolt of fear. He’d gone. He’d done a runner.

It was daylight. She glanced up at the clock on the wall. Nine in the morning. She’d slept all night.

Something scraped against her abdomen, the sharp edges tickling her skin. Jessica looked down and let out a strangled cry. Her jeans were undone, both the zipper and button. A folded sheet of paper poked out of the top of her black bikini briefs.

He’d left a note _inside her underwear_.

And she hadn’t felt a thing. She yanked the paper out and unfolded it with trembling hands. His handwriting.

_Catch you later X_

The fucking X squiggle. A kiss. Any normal person would have left a note on the coffee table or pinned to the fridge or something, but not him. He’d invaded her space, her body, again and she almost dry-heaved. Okay. Throw it away. She was otherwise clothed at least, but she stumbled over to the bathroom and she couldn’t get into the shower fast enough.

She scrubbed herself as if she’d been infected, water pouring down her back, before she remembered the tracker. She could find him. He had a head start but no matter how far he ran, she’d know where he was.

Or… she could let him go. Let IGH deal with him. She’d never wanted this anyway.

Maybe they wouldn’t find him. Maybe they were the bad guys and it was better that Kilgrave got away from them. Maybe she was swallowing Kilgrave’s bullshit yet again.

It didn’t matter. No matter the truth, Kilgrave was now loose and that meant he was using his mind control on innocent people. He’d hurt someone, if he hadn’t already. He’d…

She swallowed.

He’d gone after his parents.

As soon as the notion entered her head, she knew it was true. Why else would he leave without her? She got out of the shower and dressed in a hurry, grabbing her phone on the way out. She hadn’t used the tracker app Kozlov had installed yet, but one glance told her all she needed to know. He’d already reached Toronto.

It looked like she was going to Canada.

*

She got a taxi as fast as she could, booked a flight for an obscene price online, and called Kozlov to tell him that IGH had better pay her expenses.

“Jessica, is everything under control?”

“Everything’s fine,” she lied.

She explained the situation except for the part where Kilgrave had escaped and he seemed to buy it. No need for anyone to know that she’d fucked up already. No, she’d handle Kilgrave herself.

The flight passed in a messy blur. The border patrol officers asked her what was the purpose of her visit to Canada and she suppressed a bitter laugh. Work, she told them. She was going to a conference.

Well, that much was true.

The conference itself was taking place at a hotel, one of those fancy places with corporate meeting rooms and shit. She walked in, glancing around until she saw a sign that said the word “neuroscience” on it, and stole one of the lanyards from the reception table while the staff weren’t looking.

“Hey,” she said to the lady manning the stand. “I’m looking for Professor Hawkes, do you know where I can find him?”

“Professor Hawkes? He’s probably around somewhere. He already gave his lecture this morning.”

So he was still here. That was all she needed to know. Kilgrave was here somewhere too, and Jessica opened the app again, zooming in until she could orient herself against the blinking white dot that marked his location. He was less than three hundred metres away.

The trail led up to the fourth floor. Jessica got in the elevator, her heart starting to pound, and stepped out into the beigest of corridors. She followed the directions on the app. Fifty metres away. Forty metres away…

The door to one of the hotel rooms opened and a familiar figure stepped out. He turned and saw her, mouth opening in surprise. For a second their eyes locked and something twisted inside her – fear and determination all rolled up into one.

Then he ran and Jessica sprang into action.

A rush of adrenaline surged through her muscles. He had nothing on her. He didn’t even make it halfway to the elevator before she caught him. She grabbed his shoulders and slammed him against the wall, and next to them a very expensive-looking vase wobbled on its shiny marble table and fell off, smashing on the floor. Kilgrave gasped for breath and she was panting too, blood rushing through her head, and then he laughed and she shook him, incensed.

“Got you, asshole. Where are your parents?”

“Oh, very good. Good work, Jessica. You do know me.”

She turned him around and shoved him back again so they were facing each other, glaring at him. What the fuck was that shit-eating grin? What had she missed?

“Your parents,” she said again, pinning his shoulders. “Did you find them?”

“They’re in that room.” He indicated to his right, meaning the room that he’d just come out of. “But I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”

Her stomach dropped. “What?”

He didn’t reply so she dragged him over there, telling him to stay put while she body-slammed the door. It crumpled inwards and Jessica strode in, ready to kick ass if they attacked her or whatever other fresh hell Kilgrave had prepared.

She stopped dead. His words became suddenly, horrifyingly clear.

A middle-aged woman was laid out on the bed, her long hair matted with blood. It was everywhere: staining the mattress, her sweater, pants, and the bloody steak knife resting by her hand. Multiple stab wounds, all to the chest and abdomen. And posed in an armchair next to her was an older man, white-haired, with a clear plastic bag wrapped over his head. Limp, a broken doll.

She’d arrived too late. They were already dead. Her breath caught in her chest. She couldn’t get it out.

“He stopped breathing two minutes ago,” Kilgrave said, coming in after her as she tried not to hyperventilate. “Perfect timing on your part, I’m impressed.”

“You killed them.”

It came out as a croak.

“He killed her,” Kilgrave corrected her, “and then he took his own life. I wish you’d been here to see it. Poetic justice.”

“ _Why_?”

“Why? Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said? They abandoned me. Their only son. Betrayed my trust, betrayed everything. Would you have them torture me again? If we’d taken them back to IGH, that’s exactly what would have happened. God only knows what sick experiments I’d have to endure. Look,” he said, and his voice softened, “I’m sorry for leaving you. I didn’t want to do it, I’d rather we teamed up but you’d made up your mind. Now they’re dead, well, we’re free to go.”

“Free to go?” She shook her head. “We’re not free to go. They know where you are, Kilgrave, they’re tracking you!”

“Tracking me?” he asked at once. “Tracking me how?”

She paced around, running her hands through her hair. God, this was so fucked up. “You can’t get away with this. You killed your parents – you just extended your sentence.”

And she’d failed the task that Kozlov had given her. She was meant to bring back Kilgrave’s parents alive. How was he going to react to that?

“Oh, right, yeah. The sentence I got in the trial I was never given, that sentence. Wake up, Jessica. You know there’s something wrong here. You know they can’t be trusted.”

“Shut up! I’m trying to think.”

She couldn’t focus with his words getting into her head. She had to make a rational decision, not let herself be manipulated. It was hard to do in a hotel room miles from home with only two dead bodies and her sociopathic ex for company.

“You said they were tracking me,” said Kilgrave. “Tracking me how, Jessica? Tell me!”

She turned away from him, taking a deep breath. Okay. Plan A. Get out of this room. No sense in getting arrested for murders she hadn’t committed. Plan B…

“Come with me,” she said.

*

They hid in a different room on the floor below. On the way they’d passed one of the hotel staff and Kilgrave had instructed the man to take care of his parents’ bodies. He told the room’s occupants to leave too and Jessica didn’t bother stopping him. Right now she needed his mind control. She needed to buy some time.

Kilgrave crouched down by the suitcase left behind by the man whose room he’d taken and started rifling through it. There was another suitcase by the bed too, probably belonging to his partner, but Jessica was too distracted to think about that. She couldn’t get the image of his dead parents out of her head. All that blood. The stench of it. She could still taste the iron on her tongue.

“I can’t do this.” She passed her hand over her eyes. “God, you sick…”

He looked up. “By the way, did you get my note?”

She gritted her teeth. “Yeah, thanks. Good to know you’re still a rapey prick. Get up. I’m taking you back to Kozlov.”

He zipped up the suitcase and stood up slowly, tilting his head. “I talked to my parents. Don’t you want to know what they said?”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“About the move to Russia. The flash drive. You have it, right?”

She blinked. Right, the yellow flash drive. She didn’t know what was on it. Did it matter now? Kozlov wouldn’t get whatever he had wanted from Albert and Louise.

“You’re on it,” said Kilgrave softly. “They told me the password, if you want to look.”

She was on it? How? Why? Jessica swallowed. God, if he was lying right now…

“What’s the password?”

Kilgrave folded his arms. “How are they tracking me?”

He met her look with a level gaze. So they were playing this game again. One piece of information in exchange for another.

“Just tell me the fucking password.”

“I’ll tell you, after you help me.”

“I don’t know!” She shook her head. “Kozlov said they implanted it…” Maybe it was under his skin. Gross. “Noticed any new scars lately?”

“No…” He made a face. “If I had something implanted in me, I’d know. I’d see it.”

“Not if it was a part of your body that you can’t see.” An idea occurred to her. “Take off your shirt.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yes, ma’am.”

They went into the bathroom, Kilgrave unbuttoning his shirt along the way. The lights reflecting off the white curves of the bath, sink and toilet were unforgiving. She stood beside Kilgrave looking in the mirror and her face was wan, its pallor starkly framed by her black hair. Kilgrave was pale too, and grim as he examined himself, looking for evidence of what had been done to him.

“You have to tell me everything,” she said. “No lies or I swear to God I will rip your balls off.”

“I will,” he said.

Fine. She took a breath and examined his bare back, running her fingers over his spine, but the flesh was smooth. Unbroken.

“Do you know what you’re looking for?”

“Nope.”

She bit her lip, frowning. Where else? The back of his neck? She pressed her fingers to the base of his skull, in case she was missing a scar covered by his hair. Kilgrave watched her through the mirror. Nothing. He turned slightly and opened his mouth, and then she saw it. Behind his left ear.

“There.” She touched the raised skin and he winced. “Feel that?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“You’ll have to cut it out.” She stepped back. “Now tell me the password.”

He gave her an incredulous look. “You’re not going to help me?”

“I already helped you. Do as you’re told.”

She was done with him and Kilgrave seemed to sense that too, giving a shrug. “All right. You’ll want to know about the Russia thing too. Mum and Dad heard about me being locked up. They’d just started coming out of hiding these last few months and were looking for an opportunity to continue their work. That’s when Moscow called. They were gathering records of their old research and the research of others they’d worked with in the past to take with them to their new jobs. That’s what’s on the flash drive. I’m on it too, apparently. Can’t wait to see that.”

The contents of the flash drive would either back up his story or prove him wrong. He knew that, she thought. Either way, she’d find out soon.

“What’s the password?”

“I wrote it down.” He took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. “Here.”

*

It took several hours to fully go through the flash drive. Kilgrave hadn’t joined her at first. He’d stayed in the bathroom to cut out the tracker and then showed it to her when he emerged: a small blinking disc like an LED card. He’d bandaged up his ear with a plaster stolen from the previous occupant’s suitcase.

Jessica checked the app. “Yep. Still working.”

“So did you find anything?”

She had her laptop open on the bed. Kilgrave peered over her shoulder and she didn’t have the energy to flinch. Jessica clicked through to one of the files.

“I found you.”

A child held down on a table, crying out in pain as some anonymous white-coated figure injected a giant fucking needle into his spine. She guessed it was him because the two scientists in the footage had British accents. Kilgrave’s face confirmed it.

“That’s enough,” he said, hitting the pause button. “What else?”

“I found me. You were right.”

They weren’t the only files there either; the Thompsons had collected footage of numerous children from the nineteen eighties to the early two thousands. Twenty years’ worth of experiments. She showed him her footage. Her face was only briefly visible, scrunched up in pain and then unconscious. More spinal injections. A lot more. Her back looked like a fucking pin cushion.

Kilgrave watched it, his face drawn. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t remember most of it. There’s something else…”

She fast forwarded through to another section that had caught her eye. The doctor, whom someone had addressed as Karl, talking to another man who only appeared briefly in this part of the video.

“That’s Karl Malus,” said Jessica, pointing at him. Square red-rimmed glasses, ponytail, and beard. Her life had been saved by a goddamn hippy. “Kozlov told me about him. Who’s this guy?”

Kilgrave peered at the footage. The other guy was clean-cut, back straight, handlebar moustache. Something about the neatness of his shirt and tie and his posture screamed military to her.

_“How’s the procedure going?” he asked._

_“It’s too soon to tell,” Dr. Malus replied. “She was badly injured. It’s been touch and go for the past week.”_

_“Well, let me know how it goes. If you’re looking for investment…”_

The footage wasn’t high quality so it was hard to tell but from the way Karl’s shoulders hunched, Jessica didn’t think he liked the prospect of receiving investment from this guy. But he politely thanked him anyway and the guy left. Later, another man came in and Jessica recognised a younger Kozlov.

_“Was that Ross?”_

_“Yeah, you just missed him…”_

Kilgrave looked at her. “Ross?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know either.”

He sat back, chewing his tongue. “If he’s the one investing in IGH…”

“This was years ago. Simpson told me that IGH shut down after they operated on me. Maybe they never got that investment.”

“But they’re operating now, aren’t they? Kozlov works for the Raft which means someone’s paying him. I…”

He stopped, and Jessica glanced sharply at him. “What?”

“You know what, I agree with you,” said Kilgrave. “I think we do need to go back to Kozlov. Have you told him what happened yet?”

She looked away. “No.”

“Are you going to?”

Well, she’d have to eventually, wouldn’t she? Even if the Thompsons’ bodies were successfully disposed of, they’d be reported missing sooner or later. They probably had a day, maybe two at most, before Kozlov contacted her for an update.

But there was something nagging at her about this footage, about what was going on with Kilgrave’s parents. Why did Kozlov want to get hold of them? Did the flash drive have something to do with it?

Kilgrave was looking at her expectantly. She remembered what he had said before. If she didn’t make a decision, he would. He’d take control.

“I need to think,” she said. “I need some space. Can you leave me alone for five minutes?”

He considered her for a moment and then nodded. “I’ll take a shower. Let me know if you need me.”

Thank God he wasn’t being difficult. He disappeared into the bathroom and Jessica took a deep breath, closing the laptop. She was tired. She was tired and she needed to hear a voice that wasn’t Kilgrave’s, someone she could talk to. Someone who could make sense of the mess she was in.

She called Trish.

To her relief, Trish answered within two rings. “Jess? Are you okay?”

Jessica leaned back with her head on the pillow, smiling for the first time all day. “I’m fine. I just wanted to check in.”

“Well, I have some news. I found IGH.”

There was a barely suppressed triumph in Trish’s voice. It was surreal. Jessica opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before she found the right words.

“What?”

Well, a word.

“Simpson’s card. I knew he wasn’t just a cop. I went to the address and–”

“Whoa, hey, what the hell? You’re supposed to be in hiding! You shouldn’t even be in New York. How did you find the address?”

“I memorised it.”

When she’d gone over to Trish’s place and shown her Simpson’s card as proof that she wasn’t crazy. Trish was more resourceful than she had anticipated.

“They showed me the lab,” Trish continued. “It’s where they gave you your powers.”

“I know,” she said, still unable to process that she was actually having this conversation. “I went there too.”

“Did you see what they’re doing here? It’s amazing.”

“You mean Kozlov?”

“Doctor Kozlov, yes, we met. Jess, they’ve made a cure for Kilgrave! And they’ve got other cool stuff too, there’s this performance-enhancing drug–”

“Okay, stop. What the hell are you doing?”

This wasn’t how this conversation was supposed to go. She was meant to be talking to Trish about her own situation. Trish was meant to be perfectly safe and far away from all this, so that she could give Jessica advice without Jessica having to worry about her safety or well-being.

“I’m helping you.”

“Doing what I told you to do was helping me.” Her heart was racing. She was more stressed now than she had been talking with Kilgrave. “You would have been safe. This is… This is not helping, this is putting yourself at risk for no goddamn reason–”

“That’s not true. You think I’m afraid to put myself at risk? Did you really think I was going to run and hide while you had Kilgrave to deal with? You know me better than that. They said I can meet Doctor Malus. Karl Malus. He’s the one who helped you, he can help me too. I’ll take the inoculation, then I’ll be immune like you and I’ll be able to help…”

“Are you crazy? You can’t let them shoot you full of drugs. You have no idea what that shit will do.”

“Then I’ll be the first to test it.”

“No. Goddammit, Trish, you are not doing that.”

“Where are you? Are you with Kilgrave?”

She glanced at the bathroom. She could hear the spray of water. He was still in the shower.

“Yes.”

“Tracking down his parents, right? Did you find them?”

She kept her voice carefully neutral. “Yeah, we found them.”

“That’s great. So I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Trish…” She had to say _something_. “Look, Kozlov and the rest. You can’t trust them. I don’t want you going back there.”

“Why not?”

“I think they’re up to some shady shit. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m gonna find out.”

“Well, then, I have to go back there. They trust me, I can snoop around…”

“No! Goddammit, no. Stay the hell out of this.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

Trish hung up, and Jessica collapsed flat on her back, her legs like jelly. Jesus Christ, she felt worse. What was Trish doing? Forget that, what was IGH doing? Kozlov had claimed that the reason they needed Kilgrave’s parents in the first place was to help develop the inoculation, so how come Trish had said that they’d already made one? Was Kozlov lying about the drug? Or lying about the reason he wanted to get hold of Kilgrave’s parents?

Either way he was lying.

She closed her eyes.

Goddammit. She was supposed to be a P.I. This was a mystery, a full-on investigation and she was supposed to hunt down clues and interrogate suspects until she got to the truth of the matter. Instead she felt exhausted. She didn’t know which way to turn. It was all too close, that was the problem; she wasn’t investigating a case involving some stranger, she was caught up in it herself and so was Kilgrave and now so was Trish. Which was exactly the situation she’d tried to avoid.

“Bathroom’s free!” said Kilgrave, startling her with his cheery tone.

He was in far too much of a good mood for someone who had recently murdered their own parents. She opened her eyes and glared at him.

“I’ll pass.”

“Body odour isn’t pleasant, Jessica.” He sat down on the bed, running a hand through still-damp hair. “You did get off a plane today.”

She sat up as soon as he came near and crossed her legs, her skin prickling. “I’ll stink all night if it puts you off.”

“Mmm.” He shrugged, looking at her. “So, now what? Did you decide what to do?”

Shit. No, she hadn’t. The phone call with Trish had only left her with more questions. Jessica looked away, digging her nails into the palms of her hands.

“Talk to me,” said Kilgrave. “Let me help.”

She pressed her lips together, trying determinedly not to look at him. She could see him looking at her at the edges of her vision, eyes locked on hers.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted, pretending that she was talking to Trish or her therapist or anyone who wasn’t Kilgrave. “Kozlov is lying. I don’t know what they’ll do with us if I bring you back. And my friend is in danger.”

“Your friend?”

“Trish.” She sensed him twitch beside her. “I told her not to get involved and she ran in there anyway.”

“Well, that sounds like her.”

“So now I have to make a decision,” Jessica continued, her voice cracking. “I have to do the right thing. You’re a criminal; I should turn you in. But to who? Kozlov? What if this doesn’t stop? What if he’s going to use you to do something worse? I used to think I could tell right from wrong. Now I don’t know and you have no idea how terrifying that is.”

She looked at him then and Kilgrave leaned in a little closer, reaching out to brush her arm. She flinched away. “Hey,” he said softly. “Don’t say that. You can tell right from wrong, you always have. You just don’t know who to believe. Who to trust.”

“It’s the same thing, isn’t it? What if I make a mistake? What if I do something that gets Trish killed?”

That was the thing that had sent her into a tailspin. Trish being in danger. If it was just her, then fine, she could take care of herself and if it all went to shit, then so be it. But if something happened to Trish…

She couldn’t bear it.

His mouth thinned. “You won’t.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know that. I…”

She swallowed. The thought on the tip of her tongue was a terrible one, but it was there now and she’d said so much already.

“Sometimes I wish you could control me again.”

He blinked. “Why?”

“Because then whatever happens would be your fault. I’ve made so many mistakes. I’ve done terrible things. Everything we did together, all the people we hurt… I ask myself every day, why did I do all the bad shit I did? Why didn’t I stop you sooner?”

“Is that really how you torment yourself?”

“And I’m scared that I’m about to do it again.” She looked at him. “I want out. I want to stop feeling like this. I want…” She let out a breath. “I want to be free.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, killing myself?”

“Jessica–”

“But I’m too much of a coward for that. Drinking doesn’t help. Maybe there’s another way.”

“What?”

“You.”

His eyes widened. She hated herself for doing this, she really did, but she was at a loss for answers. She knew that he cared about her in his own twisted way; there was some sense of reliability, predictability, in that. He knew what he wanted and she didn’t.

Jessica leaned forward. “Tell me what to do. Tell me that everything’s going to be okay.”

“Jessica…” He took a breath. “Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”  

She exhaled, closing her eyes.

Stupidly, she felt better.


	7. three lives and counting

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Kilgrave. “You need proof, I understand that. You can’t trust Kozlov and you don’t know whether to trust me. There’s an easy way to fix that. We find Kozlov and make him tell the truth.”

His plan was simple. Thanks to the flash drive they had the physical evidence of IGH’s research. Kilgrave’s mind control would do the rest. A testimony. Proof of illegal experimentation.

Some part of her knew that she was helping Kilgrave to get off scot-free. But, she reasoned, the only way to make sure Kilgrave was locked up without his powers being exploited for nefarious purposes was to expose the truth. If IGH really were up to no good, she wanted to know. She’d decide what to do with Kilgrave later. 

“Jessica? What’s the delay?”

That was Kozlov. She was on the phone, leaning against the wall with Kilgrave lounging on the bed opposite her examining the metal tracker between his fingers. It was still blinking. All part of the plan.

“We found Albert and Louise,” she said. “We also learned that they’ve got a bunch of research documents and equipment hidden back at their home in Boston. I figured you’d want that too. Do you? We can take a detour.”

There was a pause. “What kind of documents?”

“I don’t know, experimental notes and shit. They mentioned a flash drive. It’s got video, recordings of medical treatments being tested on sick kids. I heard you’re on it.”

“I’m on it?” For the first time Kozlov sounded flustered and Jessica bit back a smile. “We should take a look. Collect what you need from Boston and meet us at the facility tonight. Thank you, Jessica. This is more important than you know.”

 _Sure it is_ , she thought, making a face. “No problem,” was all she said. “We’ll meet you at six.”

She ended the call and looked over at Kilgrave.

“Did he buy it?” Kilgrave asked.

“Yep. He wants that flash drive.”

“Good,” said Kilgrave, sliding off the bed. “Never hurts to have leverage.”

On their way out, Kilgrave stopped one of the hotel guests, a red-faced man carrying a heavy-looking briefcase, slipped the tracker into his hand and ordered him to go to Massachusetts. To Kozlov and his goons it would look as if Kilgrave and Jessica were heading back to Boston, just like she’d told him.

But they weren’t going back to Boston.

Four hours later, they arrived at Kozlov’s house.

*

“Rina?” Kilgrave called, buzzing the doorbell. “Rina, open up! Someone open this door!”

Jessica stood back and made her assessment. The upstairs curtains were closed. Downstairs she couldn’t see shit. Rina might come to the window and see them, which wouldn’t end well. She might have security of her own, given that she’d been controlled by Kilgrave once already. If she didn’t, that was a major oversight on her husband’s part. Jessica didn’t think that he’d be here but would he leave his wife unprotected?

They were here for Rina. Nothing like kidnapping someone’s wife to make them cooperate.

“I’ll do it,” she said, shoving Kilgrave aside.

He raised his eyebrows but let her step forward. Jessica twisted the door handle until it broke, the door swinging open. Easy. She gestured for Kilgrave to follow her in.

“Anyone in here, come out now!” Kilgrave called.

Jessica scowled at him. “Sure, alert the whole neighbourhood.”

“Better than being caught by surprise,” he countered. “Anyone inside this house, come out now! Don’t do anything else. We just want to talk.”

Nothing. They were in the hallway, a staircase ahead of them. Jessica looked in the kitchen. Cold, empty, the gleaming surfaces giving nothing away. They moved on. Over to the lounge, where an ornate mirror hung over the mantelpiece and gold-striped wallpaper offended her eyes. An old-fashioned record player stood by the couch and there was a piano in the corner. Someone in the house was musical.

Jessica observed all that within the first three seconds of stepping into the room, looking around with Kilgrave at her shoulder.

Then a familiar voice spoke from behind her. “Hands up. Turn around slowly and don’t move.”

Jessica turned, raising her hands. It was Simpson, not in uniform, blond hair hidden beneath his baseball cap, lip curled in an unmistakable sneer. He also had a gun pointed at them, but Jessica didn’t expect that to do any good. Her eyes flicked over to Kilgrave who stepped forward.

“Put the gun down and stay exactly where you are. Who the hell are you?”

Simpson smirked, still holding the gun. “Nice try. Hands up, asshole. Now!”

He hadn’t obeyed. Jessica exchanged another glance with Kilgrave, his troubled expression mirroring hers. Simpson hadn’t obeyed.

He was immune.

“I said put the gun down!” Kilgrave tried again, but Jessica laid a hand on his arm.

“It won’t work! Do as he says. That’s Simpson, he’s one of them. He works for IGH.”

“One of them, huh?” said Simpson, taking a step into the room as Kilgrave slowly raised his hands. “Did you forget you’re on our side, Jessica? Or did this creep already get to you?”

“How did you find us?” Jessica asked, looking around for an escape route, a weapon, something. Simpson was blocking the only exit unless she chose to crash through the window. She wasn’t close enough to get the jump on him before he fired. And he was a trained combatant, not a civilian. It wouldn’t be easy to take him by surprise.

“Your tracker,” said Simpson. “We realised pretty quickly you weren’t going back to Boston. Why did you lie?”

“But Kilgrave took it out. He–”

“Not his tracker,” said Simpson. He nodded at Jessica. “Yours. The app on your phone.”

…Oh, those bastards. Of course. Kilgrave wasn’t the only asset they needed to monitor. Jessica moved her hand over the cell phone in her pocket, tempted to grab it and smash it to bits. Too late for that now. Kilgrave had gone quiet but she could sense him tense and nervous at her shoulder. She needed to handle this.

The couch, she thought. If they got in the right position, they’d be able to dive behind it, take cover… She nudged Kilgrave, stepping back, and he shot her a quizzical look but moved back with her.

“We came to see Kozlov,” she said, buying time. “Where is he?”

“No, no,” said Simpson. “You don’t fool me. You told Kozlov you’d meet him tonight, but instead you removed _his_ tracker and came here. What were you planning to do with Rina, huh? What did you do with the scientists?”

“We came for Kozlov. We just want to talk.”

“Then talk.”

“Oh, this is bollocks,” said Kilgrave suddenly and she nearly elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re obviously not going to shoot us or you would have already, so why don’t you just tell us what you want. If it’s my parents, you’re out of luck. But we do have the evidence they collected. A nice series of home videos, features screaming children and the like. So how about we sit down and make a deal–”

“Shut up!” Simpson barked, brandishing the gun.

Kilgrave bristled beside her, anger flashing in his eyes, and she had to grip his arm to stop him again. He’d probably never been yelled at like that before. Well, except by her. But he wasn’t used to threats and if he did something stupid they were both going to get shot.

“I don’t make deals with scumbags,” Simpson continued, and that was one sentiment she couldn’t begrudge him for, “but I could make a deal with you.”

Meaning her. He was looking at her. She licked dry lips. How she was going to get out of this, she didn’t know, but she’d been inching closer towards cover so there had to be a chance…

“What kind of a deal?”   

Simpson lowered his gun, which gave her a small semblance of relief but not much since he was still holding it. She wished she could tell Kilgrave to stay put without risking aggravating him, but she hoped he wouldn’t try anything. Physical fighting wasn’t exactly his forte.  

“Let me lay it out for you,” said Simpson. “This was a test run. My boss wanted to trial the two of you together and see how effective you could be.”

“Effective?” she repeated. Her heart was in her mouth. “What does that mean?”

“We knew that Kilgrave would kill his parents,” said Simpson. “Or that there was a high probability, at least. Kozlov is willing to offer you a deal. Work for us, keep Kilgrave on a tight leash, and we’ll make it worth your while.”

Kilgrave glared at him. “What do you mean, a tight leash?”

“Keep him under control. He’s too dangerous to be left alone.”

“That wasn’t our deal.” Her fingernails dug into her hands. “We agreed one time only and then he goes back in the box.”

Simpson nodded. “Kozlov thought you’d say that. Think of it as renegotiating terms. Come with me and we can discuss the details.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

He shrugged. “It’s your choice.”

The question hadn’t fazed him. Jessica stared, a hundred doubts flickering through her mind. He didn’t seem bothered about whether she agreed or not and given the lack of choice she’d had so far, she guessed they planned to get what they wanted from her either way. He was armed; they weren’t. This could still end very badly.

“Jessica,” said Kilgrave. “I hope you’re not planning to listen to this charlatan.”

“Think about it,” said Simpson. “You could do some good in the world. Do something for your country. Even a guy like him can be put to some use, with the right sort of pressure.”

“You’re a real blowhard, you know that?” said Kilgrave. “All you people have done for months is look for ways to use my power to kill people. You call that doing good in the world?”

“When you’re killing bad guys, yes.”

He had that dumb-as-a-brick certainty about him. The loyal minion. She’d met guys like him before – liked to think they were some kind of hero, liked solving their problems with a gun and calling it justice.

She thought of the blood soaking Louise’s corpse and gritted her teeth. “And killing the Thompsons? Kilgrave’s parents. You think they were the bad guys? Why did you want them dead?”

“They were planning to sell our secrets to a foreign power. We were protecting our IP – and the world.”

Russia. They knew about Kilgrave’s parents going to Moscow so they’d sent her and Kilgrave to intercept them. Somewhere inside her, a red mist was boiling up into a cloud of rage. Those fuckers. They’d lied to her at every turn. Kozlov, Simpson, everyone and anyone who had supervised Kilgrave at the Raft. None of them could be trusted.

“You were covering your tracks!” said Kilgrave.

“Shut up! You don’t get a say.” Simpson looked at Jessica. “Come on. What’s your decision?”

This trial run, as Simpson described it, had been an assassination mission. One they’d sent her on by means of deception and with false promises. Whatever government agency had authorized this, whether it was S.H.I.E.L.D or someone else, she wanted no part in it.

“My decision is no.” She looked Simpson direct in the eye. “I don’t work well with others. And I don’t work for anyone, especially not corporate shitballs like you.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that.” He didn’t look surprised. “Fine. Hand him over.”

Kilgrave gave her an alarmed look. He’d stayed right by her shoulder, understandably unwilling to go anywhere near Simpson.

Her gaze remained steady. “No.” 

“That asshole is our prisoner, not yours.”

“And you’ve proven that you’re not fit to be responsible for him. I wanna talk to Kozlov.”

Simpson grimaced. “Jessica. This is your last chance. Hand him over, now.”

She didn’t move. Kilgrave gave a nervous twitch. The tension in the room buzzed under her skin; Jessica licked her lips. One more step to the left and she could…  

Slowly, Kilgrave reached for her hand.

“Okay,” said Simpson, and raised the gun.

It happened in slow motion. Simpson pointed the gun at her. Her eyes widened. Her hand instinctively grabbed for Kilgrave’s, but it wasn’t there – he threw himself in front of her–

“Stop!”

Her breath caught. Simpson hadn’t fired, but he still had his gun trained on the pair of them. And Kilgrave was standing in front of her, using himself as a human shield – what the hell was he thinking?

“If you want to shoot her, you’ll have to go through me,” said Kilgrave. “You can’t kill me, can you? You need me alive.”

“Get out of the way!”

“Jessica made a hasty decision,” said Kilgrave. “She’s stubborn, but not immoveable. Let me talk to her.”

“Jessica doesn’t have the balls,” Simpson sneered. “I read her case file. I knew she wouldn’t take the deal. And we only need your voice. The rest of you doesn’t have to be functional.”

“Fine,” said Kilgrave. “Do whatever you want with me, fine, but don’t hurt her. I just want to know one thing. Why won’t you do as I tell you?”

Okay, she thought. That was it.

Simpson opened his mouth to answer and she grabbed Kilgrave by the waist, throwing them both behind the back of the couch. The gun went off – the mirror above the mantelpiece shattered, showering them with broken glass and Jessica got into a crouching position, braced herself, and shoved the couch hard, right into the path of where she could hear Simpson’s footsteps. There was a muffled yell, the crash of someone falling heavily–

She leapt over the upturned couch–

The gun, there, glinting in the reflection of shattered glass, still gripped in Simpson’s hand. She stamped on his arm and he yelped, letting go. Jessica kicked the gun away and then Simpson was on his feet and throwing a punch at her, and though the blow only glanced off her side it was enough to knock the wind out of her, sending her sprawling to the carpeted floor. Little stings blossomed in her hands, the glass shards drawing blood.

She jumped up and Simpson shoved her back into the wall, his hands trying to find a grip around her throat–

She gasped for breath. How was he so strong? He was _inhumanely_ strong, the force of his body pinning her against the empty fireplace, her spine curving under the pressure.

She had no idea where Kilgrave was or if he could help. She was only aware of the man in front of her, his grunts and pants, his fist pulling back for another strike…

Rage surged through her. With one final, momentous effort, she shoved him off and then hurled herself forward, got her hands around his neck and _twisted_ – 

There was a clear _snap_.

His body went slack. She let go and he dropped like a sack of meat, leaving Jessica staring, wild-eyed and bloody-handed, and there was Kilgrave a few feet away holding the gun, but his hands were awkward; it was clear he had no idea what he was doing.

He hadn’t pulled the trigger. She’d done it first.

The room was a mess: Simpson’s body draped over the upturned couch, the record player broken too, glass shards crunching underfoot…

“Jessica?”

Her name sounded faint, like she was hearing it from underwater. She lifted her hands, staring at them. Tiny bits of glass stuck in her flesh. Blood. Red lines dripping off her skin.

“Jessica, let’s go.”

Kilgrave had dropped the gun. His hand closed around her shoulder and he had a couple of scratches on his face, but otherwise he seemed fine, he was pulling her away…

They fled the house. She didn’t remember how they got out.

*

Nightfall. Her hands were bandaged, but she didn’t really need the first aid. The cuts were superficial and she healed quickly. Even Kilgrave’s scratches had scabbed and faded.

They were in a house. Someone’s house, she didn’t know or care whom. Kilgrave had bundled her here and she was sitting on the carpet with her back against the wall – or rather, a set of bookshelves housing the owner’s impressive DVD collection. She had a blanket wrapped around her. Fuzzy red.

Her head was also fuzzy and red.

Kilgrave knelt in front of her. “Hey. You need to eat. I made pasta, come on. You’ll feel better with a full stomach.”

He hadn’t made anything, of course. The house’s owner had, but they were invisible. She didn’t notice them as Kilgrave led her through to the dining room, as she sat down with him and a hand poured their drinks. She averted her eyes.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kilgrave asked at length.

The pasta smelled good. Her stomach rumbled. She picked up her fork. The actions were automatic, disconnected. Life went on. She could commit murder and then have dinner like nothing happened.

“You’re in shock,” he said. “But we’re safe now, Jessica. They won’t find us.”

A flash of clarity made her look up. “My phone–”

“Gone,” said Kilgrave calmly. “Like I said, they won’t find us.”

Which meant she’d lost her only way to contact Trish. Or Kozlov. Or anyone… She could use her laptop, she could email…

It was raining outside, she thought dimly. Tap-tap-tapping against the walls and roof. Pity it couldn’t wash her clean.

“You did the right thing,” said Kilgrave, and the pasta became soggy cardboard in her mouth.

She swallowed heavily. “Don’t say that.”

“I know you don’t like killing,” he said, “but you’ve done it before. It was self-defence.”

“No.” She shook her head, her heart pounding. “No, you’re…”

“I’m what?”

There was a wine bottle in the middle of the table. She started to reach for her glass and then thought better of it, grabbing the wine instead to drink straight from the bottle. Kilgrave watched her with something between sympathy and exasperation.

She wiped her mouth when she’d finished. “You don’t know all the shit I’ve done.”

“What don’t I know?”

Somewhere in the room a clock was ticking. The sound of it seemed amplified along with the drumming of the rain. Like a heartbeat. Or a countdown.

But the mist was starting to clear.

“I should be able to defend myself without killing anyone. But I can’t stop. I…”

“How many?” he asked softly.

She closed her eyes. “Three.”

“Three? Carl the Krav Maga instructor. Simpson. And one more. Who was the third?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I didn’t get his name.”

Kilgrave leaned forward across the dinner table. “Tell me.”

*

It happened at Luke’s bar. She was drinking, playing pool, looking for a quick lay. Mick or Mike was his name. They made it into the bathroom stall, she shoved him up against the wall and clamped her hand over his mouth to shut him up and then he started struggling…

There was a scuffle.

He shoved her and she retaliated, grabbing him and slamming him back, only his head hit the wall with a too-loud crack and then there was blood and his limbs went slack and this had happened before…

She’d used too much force in too confined a space.

At first she didn’t believe it. A gasp shuddered through her body and she lifted him up – surely he had only been knocked out, she could drag his ass out the door and leave him with his friends and everything would be fine. Maybe he’d wake up with some brain damage but that was hardly a great loss to society.

But she couldn’t find his pulse. Her fingers scrabbled at his throat and then over his chest. Nothing. He was heavy, a dead weight.

He was dead.

Her breaths came thick and fast, too much for her. Her fingers turned hot and cold. She felt sick and dizzy; she was spiralling; she was holding a _dead body_.

Blood smeared her hands; she grabbed some toilet paper and tried to wipe it off. Blood leaked from his skull too; she didn’t dare to look at the back of his head to see how far it had been smashed in. She pulled his hood over his head to disguise it. There. That would work for a minute, so she could get him out.

Swallowing the bile in her throat, Jessica hauled the dead man upright, kicked open the door, and strode out of the bathroom and back into the bar.

“We’re taking off,” she said to his friends who were all too drunk to pay much attention. “Is his car out back?”

A few wolf whistles followed her and not much else. Jessica shoved past the crowd and out into the street. She had the guy’s car keys in her hand; they’d been tucked inside the back pocket of his jeans. She kept walking and clicked the unlock button until a nearby car’s lights flashed, then she dumped the body in the front seat and climbed in behind the wheel.

Oh boy.

Technically, Jessica knew how to drive. She’d taken driving lessons as a teenager which Dorothy Walker had paid for when she’d been angling for Jessica to play bodyguard-slash-chauffeur to Trish as a way of making her shape up. Dorothy had abandoned that idea fast when she realised that keeping Jessica around was more of a hindrance than a help.

But that had been ten years ago and she’d never owned a car. She was drunk. And she’d killed a man. She hadn’t even started the car and her hands on the steering wheel were already shaky.

Still, she didn’t need to drive well. If anything driving erratically might make the guy’s death more convincing.

She switched on the engine and pressed her foot on the accelerator.

One single idea lodged itself in Jessica’s head: get to the river. Somehow she made it, through the dizzying green and red lights, the honking cars, heart hammering with every turn. The traffic was light. She found some rough ground near the dock and stopped there.

This was… pre-meditated. She was getting rid of a body.

_Don’t think. Don’t think._

She got out and pulled Mick-or-Mike into the driving seat. Then she slammed the door shut, walked around to the back of the car, and shoved. The car started rolling. Her walk turned into a jog, then a run, picking up speed, using all of her strength. A barrier blocked the water’s edge but she smashed through it and the vehicle sailed over the edge and crashed into the water.

Jessica teetered at the edge of the river, gasping for breath. Had she done it? Had she done enough? The car was completely submerged; she couldn’t see it. She lingered for a few seconds just in case, but she was horribly aware that she couldn’t stay.

She wiped her hands on her jeans before fleeing.  

*

The rain had stopped. Outside the house it was completely dark, with only a lamplight throwing Kilgrave’s face into sharp relief. They’d finished their meals, had the plates taken away. She was left with the last of the wine roiling around her stomach and another churning feeling that she didn’t think had anything to do with the food.

“That’s quite the story,” said Kilgrave. “Were you caught?”

She looked away. “No.”

The police hadn’t come knocking at her door and she’d never returned to Luke’s bar again. If one of the guy’s friends had remembered what she looked like, or if Luke had said something when he’d been questioned… She would have been caught. But she’d heard nothing.

“Well done.”

That was the last thing she wanted to hear. “I’m not proud of it.”

“Still… Seems you have a knack for killing and getting away with it.”

“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

“And what about the others? You didn’t mean to kill them either?”

She didn’t answer. They were all accidents, she could say that, but… She recalled her hands squeezing Simpson’s neck, that quick twist, the way his spine had snapped… She’d done that.

It had been deliberate.

“One is a mistake, I’ll give you that,” Kilgrave said. “Two… Two you might say is bad luck. But three… Three starts to look pre-meditated.”

“What do you care? You’ve killed more people as an afterthought.”

“I’ve never killed anyone.”

“You use your power–”

“Yes, yes, I use my power. So do you. If you feel that bad about it, turn yourself in. No one’s stopping you.”

Yes, she should have turned herself in a long time ago. She’d almost done it once. She’d been in the police station ready to confess. And then, like a coward, she’d chickened out.

Jessica got up, scraping her chair back. “I need a shower.”

He didn’t protest. It didn’t occur to her that she’d left him alone without supervision or a safeguard. She stumbled her way to the bathroom, undoing the bandages on her hands before she stepped into the shower, and though the blood caked under her fingernails washed out under the flowing water, she couldn’t forget what she had done. She found herself gripping the shower rail, her legs unsteady. The memories of those men’s deaths, the crimes she had committed, everything she’d confessed to Kilgrave… It all blurred into one.

A skull cracked like an egg. Smashed and bloody on the kitchen floor. A man drunk and heavy, sagging in her arms. Simpson with his neck twisted, the marks of her fingerprints around his throat.

All her fault.

The guilt hung over her, inside her, filling her with wretched bile, making her want to heave, to tear herself apart…

Water streamed over her skin. She’d never be clean. She was filthy; she was rotten to the core. She ached with it, empty, wanting – she was a murderer and for a split second it had been _satisfying_ to snap Simpson’s neck.

She couldn’t even cry. She was a husk, blown this way and that in the wind, a piece of trash and she didn’t even have the guts to turn herself in.

She couldn’t blame Kilgrave. She’d murdered that man at the bar all by herself, while he’d been in prison. And he’d been there today but he hadn’t done anything – maybe if she’d hesitated he would have shot Simpson and they’d be in a very different situation, but no, she’d gone for Simpson’s throat like she was a fucking bloodhound. One hint that he might be as strong as her and she’d gone straight for the kill.

There was no excuse. She was a murderer.

She stepped out of the shower with dripping hair and dried herself mechanically. She went into the bedroom and borrowed – oh, who was she kidding – _stole_ some clean clothes from the wardrobe. A fresh pair of jeans, a size too big, and a loose cotton shirt.   

“Jessica?”

The door opened with a soft click as Kilgrave entered, closing it behind him. He’d cleaned himself up too, the scratches on his face barely visible.

“We can stay here tonight,” he said. “Too late to do anything else anyway.”

She nodded, too tired to object.

“I’ll protect you,” he said. “It’s just the two of us now. They’ll come after us both.”

Another nod. He took a step forward.

“I put myself on the line for you today.” She recognised the edge to his voice. “I think you need to acknowledge that.”

“Yeah,” she said wearily. “Yeah, you did.”

“What, no thank you?”

She looked at him blankly. Something like fear made a knot in her gut, but it was nothing compared to the state of disgust that hung over her. Should she be thanking him? He had shown courage stepping in front of her like that…

“You’re right,” she said, folding one arm to clasp the other. “I forgot.”

“Jessica, are you okay?”

She bit her lip. At long last tears were gathering in the corners of her eyes and she blinked them away.

“Don’t be kind to me,” she said. “That’s not what I need right now.”

“I see,” he breathed. “Are you thinking about turning yourself in?”

“I’m stuck with you, aren’t I? You’re worse than any jail time.”

“Am I?”

She looked away and he stepped closer, catching her gaze.

“You think I’m your punishment, Jessica? I had a year of hell because of you and you walked away. I don’t see you suffering. I don’t see you begging me for forgiveness.”

“Kilgrave–”

He caught her wrist, and his gaze was cold. “Say you’re sorry.”

She’d hurt him. She’d betrayed him. She’d done so many things wrong to so many people in her life, but especially him.

“I’m sorry.”

“Say you want me to forgive you.”

“I want you to forgive me.”

There was a calculating look in his eyes, noticing how she was acquiescing and her eyes were wet but she kept looking at him, letting him see her like this. She had nothing left to hide.

“Beg for it.”

Her mouth trembled. “I… I’m begging you. Please forgive me.”

“No,” he said, twisting her wrist until it hurt. “You don’t deserve forgiveness. You haven’t earned it. You deserve to suffer, Jessica, you deserve to feel pain and fear and shame because you’re a coward who won’t admit what she truly wants.”

 _Yes_ , she thought. _Yes, that’s exactly what I deserve._

Out loud, she said: “You don’t know what I want.”

“Yes, I do. I’ve always known. I always knew you’d come back to me.”

He held her face then, pulled her towards him. The press of his mouth on hers was all force, no tenderness. It drove the breath from her lungs. Her hands balled into fists; she stood rigid and endured it, his tongue in her mouth, fingers scraping through her hair.

He stepped back and they stared at each other, glassy-eyed. The memory of his touch burned like a brand on her lips. The heat of his fingers. The sound of his voice.

“Take off your clothes.”

Slowly, she obeyed. She stripped off her shirt, socks, and jeans. Lifted her chin in a defiant glare. Bra, unhooked and tossed aside without ceremony. She was wearing plain black underwear. That too she peeled off, leaving her clothes in a heap at her feet.

His eyes never left her. He unhooked his belt.

_I want this. I deserve this. I deserve to suffer._

His hands gripped her shoulders and spun her around, pinning her face down on the bed. She inhaled the fresh cotton of the sheets. Her face was muffled; she turned her head and heard the creak and rustle of him moving behind her. 

He was rough. It hurt. At any moment she could have thrown him off.

She didn’t.


	8. down the rabbit hole

“Jessica…”

His hand rested on her bare stomach, warm and firm, and he nuzzled her cheek, his rough with early morning stubble, before dropping a light kiss to the tip of her nose.

Jessica stirred, blinking into wakefulness. His eyes were the first thing she saw, a playful smile tugging at his lips. Light shone through the blinds, soft and fuzzy.

She’d had too much wine, she thought. She always drank too much but that didn’t explain the shame low in her belly, nor the bile at the back of her throat.

“I think this is my favourite Jessica,” he said, brushing a lock of hair away from her cheek. “Hair spread over the pillow, a little sleepy, _slightly_ grumpy, charmingly ruffled.”

Why did he always sound so fucking cheerful? No one should be this cheerful so early in the morning. He’d been good last night: dark and intense and unrelenting. That was how she wanted him. Her own personal tormentor, the figure from her nightmares. Not this romantic bullshit.

“Get off me, dickweed.”

He sat up before she could push him away and she got out of bed, cursing when she realised she had nothing on before spending an ungainly minute hopping around the room to grab some clothes. Kilgrave watched in wry amusement.

“Last night was something to remember.” He was at ease in a bed which once again did not belong to him. “I didn’t know you had a masochistic streak. I’ll have to bear that in mind.”

She snorted, ignoring him. To her relief, Kilgrave left her alone to shower and dress, and it was maybe half an hour later that she came downstairs to the smell of bacon and eggs frying on the stove. Her mouth watered. In daylight she could have taken notice of the woman cooking them breakfast if she liked. She could have observed her greying hair spilling out of an untidy bun, the slight tremor in her papery hands as she made them coffee. She could have noted that the woman’s pearl earrings and necklace and formal attire suggested she was wealthy and perhaps not the sort of person used to waiting hand and foot on someone else, certainly not dressed like that.

But Jessica ignored all that, because she didn’t need another thing to feel guilty about. She sat down at the kitchen table at an appropriate distance from Kilgrave who was also fully dressed, and tucked into her bacon, eggs and toast. Kilgrave was browsing the news on his stolen phone.

She didn’t feel better, that wasn’t the right word. She’d piled one regret on top of another until they’d buried her. No, she was… resigned. What had happened had happened. She’d let him fuck her. He’d always said it was inevitable. Maybe he was right.

“There’s something I need to do,” she said, clear-sighted for once. She’d thought about it while she was getting ready. There was only one path available to her now.

Kilgrave looked up. “What’s that?”

“Go to Trish.” He put down his fork and she ploughed on, knowing he wouldn’t like it. “Without my phone I can’t call, and the last time we spoke she was already snooping around IGH. They’ll know by now what I did to Simpson. I can’t risk them getting to her.”

He sighed. “You do realise they’ll set a trap for you. Your place, Trish’s place, probably your mother’s too. If I were them I’d have them all watched. You can’t go back there.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I have to.”

“We should focus on finding Kozlov,” Kilgrave argued. “Take the fight to them.”

“Kozlov is probably in hiding and he’s probably immune,” she shot back. “You won’t be able to just take over and make them confess.”

“Right,” said Kilgrave, raising an eyebrow. “Right, we should talk about that. Simpson wouldn’t follow my orders. Do you know why?”

She wiped her mouth and slumped back in her chair, wondering whether to tell him. Why bother hiding it? They were in it together, for better or worse; they were both on the run from IGH and if she hadn’t been a prime candidate for the Raft before, she probably was now.

“Kozlov told me he was developing an inoculation to your mind control. I guess he succeeded.”

Kilgrave made a sound under his breath. The look he gave her was sceptical. “Anything else you’ve been keeping from me?”

She thought about it. That was the big secret, but there were other things, pieces she was starting to put together…

“He lied about your parents,” she said, looking up at him. “He told me he needed their help to make the inoculation, when really IGH wanted them dead. When I woke up in the lab, I found a puncture mark in my arm. They took my blood, like they took yours. And when I called Trish, she said they’d created a performance-enhancing drug. Simpson… He wasn’t just immune. He was strong. He almost overpowered me.”

“Because he was on the drug?”

“Maybe.” She shook her head. “I think they used my blood to make the inoculation while we were searching for your parents. Maybe it made Simpson stronger too.”

A drug that imitated her powers. Before now, she’d been the only person immune to Kilgrave’s mind control. It made sense that it was something in her body, some antibody or whatever that the scientists had extracted from her blood. She also knew that regardless of how it was made, Kilgrave wouldn’t stand for any kind of antidote to his mind control. He’d want to get rid of it.

“I see,” said Kilgrave. “We could have dealt with all of this much sooner if you’d been honest with me from the start, but I suppose that’s by the by. If you must check in on Trish, then fine, but after that I need you with me to stop Kozlov. Are you in?”

He probably meant to kill Kozlov, she thought, and she couldn’t find it in herself to care that much. Too late to avoid bloodshed now.

She nodded.

“Well then,” said Kilgrave, standing up, “no rest for the wicked.”

He told the woman who owned the house to drink herself into a coma on the way out. If she survived that, it was unlikely that she’d remember her unwelcome guests. She’d be fine, Jessica told herself. She had more important shit to worry about.

*

Kilgrave refused to accompany her to Trish’s apartment.

“It’s obviously a trap. You deal with it; I’ll wait here.”

They were scoping out the apartment from a café around the corner. Jessica hadn’t seen anything suspicious in the vicinity, but Simpson had taken them by surprise. Other goons could be lurking. Today was a Sunday so Trish wasn’t due to be at work. Jessica hoped she’d had the sense to stay at home.

She looked at Kilgrave as he reached over and nabbed one of her fries. “How do I know you won’t bail on me?”

She’d spent this long keeping him on a leash. Not a very good leash, obviously, but she didn’t know how she felt about leaving him to his own devices.

“I need you,” said Kilgrave simply. “More than ever now I know there’s this inoculation floating around. If you're not back in thirty minutes, I’ll send someone to help you. Don’t get yourself hurt.”

Self-preservation, she thought. She could believe that.  

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she said, and stood up.

Five minutes later she banged on the door of Trish’s apartment to no avail. “Trish! If you’re in there, open the goddamn door. Don’t make me break in.”

She’d given back her spare key. Trish had wanted her to keep it, she remembered with a pang, but she’d refused for some stupid reason. Back when she’d moved out, she hadn’t wanted to give herself the chance to run back to Trish. She’d wanted a clean break.

Well, then. She’d have to break in.

If any of IGH’s goons were watching the apartment, they’d know by now that she was here. Jessica kicked the door in, a nervous energy propelling her onwards, and forced herself to stay calm while she searched the place from top to bottom. She couldn’t risk missing anything.

Trish wasn’t home.

There were no signs of a break-in or any other disturbance. Her handbag was missing and so were her keys and cell phone. The lights were off. If Jessica had to guess, she’d say that Trish had left of her own accord and had yet to return. She was tempted to wait, but… Kilgrave had given her a deadline. She glanced at her watch and swore under her breath. Nine minutes left.

Trish had a security camera installed outside her door. Maybe she could check the footage. She headed over and then immediately felt stupid because there was a note pinned right there on the door. She’d closed it behind her and hadn’t noticed. Jessica ripped the note off and read it:

_Jessica,_

_Call me._

Followed by a phone number. Plain white paper, red biro. The number wasn’t Trish’s, she was fairly sure of that, but it was Trish’s handwriting. Jessica hadn’t memorised any of the numbers in her address book – a mistake she would have to rectify. Right now it didn’t matter. She had to find Trish. She’d have to follow it.

*

“Don’t call,” said Kilgrave. “Not yet.”

He’d kept his word and waited for her. They’d left quickly anyway, just in case, and now they were sheltering in the backroom of a clothing store of all places, surrounded by racks of both men’s and women’s attire, shoeboxes and shelves packed with accessories. Kilgrave perched on a crate, refusing to give his phone to her.

She blew out her cheeks in exasperation. “Why not? This is our only lead.”

“About that… There’s something I need to tell you.”

He shifted in place and alarm bells rang in her ears. “You said you’d told me everything.”

“I told you I had a list. The names of people that Hargreaves worked with, everyone connected to IGH. Kozlov is on it. So is Malus. And one other person. Reva Connors.”

Wait.

Reva Connors? Luke’s _wife_? She stared at Kilgrave in utter bafflement and he must have read her face because he tilted his head, expression quizzical.

“Do you know her?”

“Yeah, I…” She licked her lips. “I’ve heard the name.”

She told him how and understanding flashed in his eyes. “Do you know where she is?”

“No, wait. Back up. Why is she on your list?”

Luke owned a bar that she used to work at. Reva was his wife and she worked with him. As far as Jessica knew they were an ordinary couple. Hearing that Reva had some connection to IGH was like hearing that her old high school teacher was secretly a masked vigilante. They were two parts of her world that didn’t go together.

How was this possible?

“Because she gave my parents half the footage on that flash drive. And she was there at the Raft. Only once that I know of, but she’s connected to this somehow. Luke Cage too.”

“Luke?”

This was getting more and more mind-bending by the second. She pulled up a crate next to Kilgrave at his suggestion and listened in silence as he told her the story he ought to have shared days ago.

Luke had been one of the prisoners they’d thrown into Kilgrave’s cell, a small fact that he had neglected to mention. But he wasn’t like the others. He was gifted like they were. Unbreakable skin, Kilgrave said, and enhanced strength too. One day Kilgrave had taken advantage of that strength to break them out, and they’d almost succeeded.

“I was captured,” said Kilgrave. “Luke came to my rescue and that was when he mentioned Reva. He said that he saw her. I had no idea who he was talking about at the time, but…”

“Maybe she came to bail him out.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Unfortunately we were both knocked out. I woke up back in my cell and Luke was gone. I don’t know if he’s alive. Do you?”

“No,” she said slowly, thinking hard. “No, the last time I saw them was… you know.”

When she’d murdered that man in the bathroom. Kilgrave had been vague about when this incident had taken place; he claimed it was hard to keep track of time in prison. But it must have been after she’d seen them, she thought, otherwise both Luke and Reva would have behaved differently.  

“So what do you say?” Kilgrave reached out to take her hand and she snatched it away in irritation. “Shall we go find them?”

“That doesn’t help us find Trish.”

“It might help us find Kozlov.”

It might. But she would be relying on Kilgrave’s word. What were the chances that he’d made up this story to distract her? To buy time… buy time for what? Why would he lie?

She shook her head, standing up. Kilgrave got up and laid a hand on her shoulder before she could move away, and she shrugged him off with a glare.

“I told you not to touch me.”

An eyebrow lifted. “You didn’t last night.”

Or this morning. The memory of his warmth still loomed close to the surface in her consciousness. She felt her skin heat at the thought.

“That was different.”

He frowned. But she couldn’t explain it. How good it felt to punish herself, to take him into herself like poison. How could anyone explain that?

“Well,” he said. “I’ll let you decide. Do you want to make the call? Or shall we pay Luke and Reva a visit first?”

She closed her eyes. The responsibility, the pressure, of making the right choice weighed on her and she’d made the wrong decision so often… It scared her. What was freedom, really? Freedom to screw up. Freedom to ruin her life and everyone else’s. Look at Kilgrave: he had more freedom than anyone and he’d done nothing good. She hated having to choose.

She’d always followed her conscience, hadn’t she? Before Kilgrave. Before he’d come in and screwed her moral compass up. Every time she’d been faced with a difficult decision, she’d always come back to one thing:

_Protect Trish. Save Trish._

Nothing was more important. The question was which route would be better. She thought it through. If Trish was dead, she was dead and finding out now would make no difference versus finding out later. If she was being held captive by IGH, then no doubt calling that number would trigger a set of demands that she would have limited time to meet. If she waited… Trish would probably be fine and they might be better prepared to make that call. They wouldn’t kill her, not while they needed her as a hostage. On the other hand, if Trish was still snooping around and hadn’t been caught yet, she ought to call her right now and get her out.

The fact that the note contained a strange number made the former scenario more likely than the latter, she decided. If Trish had left that note of her own free will, she would have said more. She would have addressed it to “Jess”, not “Jessica”.

She opened her eyes. “Let’s find Luke and Reva.”

*

She hadn’t anticipated the rush of anxiety that would greet her when they pulled up outside Luke’s bar. For a second the memories overwhelmed her: the weight of the dead body as she hefted him outside, the sound of his feet dragging over the sidewalk, the iron tang of the blood caking his skull… She had to step back with her hands resting on the back of the cab.

“Birch Street… Main Street… Higgins Drive…”

Kilgrave gave her a curious look as she took deep breaths. “What are you doing?”

“Cobalt Lane.” She swallowed. “I’m fine.”

They entered the bar. It was quiet, just a few regulars guzzling ice-cold beers out of the reach of the afternoon sun. But behind the counter… Her heart jumped. It was him. Luke. Towel slung over his broad shoulder just like she remembered, wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt that only accentuated his well-built frame. If he’d suffered at IGH’s hands too, if he had gifts like Kilgrave claimed… He could help them.

Luke saw them coming in and his expression shifted rapidly from shock to fear to anger. “You.”

“Stop,” said Kilgrave, lifting his hand. “Luke Cage, stay calm and answer all our questions truthfully. Where’s Reva?”

Luke visibly relaxed, the tension leaving his shoulders. “At home.”

Jessica stepped forward, shooting a glance at Kilgrave. “Is it true that you were on the Raft with Kilgrave?”

“Yes.”

“We shouldn’t talk here,” Kilgrave cautioned her.

She looked around. Of course, he was right. They didn’t want to be overheard. She nodded, and Kilgrave commanded Luke to close up shop and take them home.

*

The anxiety that had overwhelmed her when she saw the bar again hadn’t disappeared. It fluttered around her ribcage, making it that bit harder to breathe. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know what they were going to learn from Luke and Reva either or whether it would be useful, and maybe that explained at least part of her anxiety.

The couple lived in a nice little apartment that made her feel a stab of jealousy everywhere she looked. A picture of them smiling on the mantelpiece. Other pictures of family members, social gatherings. Cushions. Stupid knickknacks on the side table. A lava lamp. Magazines on the table. A bird cage containing two canaries hopping about and tweeting.

It was small and a little cramped but it was _theirs_ and she felt that acutely. She’d invaded so many homes; it was second nature by now. But she’d never thought much about the lives those people led. How they compared to her own. This kind of cosy domesticity… She’d never have it.

She didn’t want it either, so why did she feel like this?

“Thank you,” said Kilgrave when Reva brought them coffee at his command. Jessica declined the coffee and requested liquor instead.

He seated them around the kitchen table, two couples facing each other, and she couldn’t decide whether this looked more like friends hanging out together, criminals co-conspiring, or an interrogation.

“It’s good to see you, Jessica,” Reva said. “We haven’t seen you in a long time.”

That might have been genuine. She felt too awkward to respond, and Kilgrave stepped in for her.

“Cut the small talk,” he said. “We don’t have much time here so you’re both going to tell us the truth. Luke, let’s start with you. What happened when you were on the Raft?”

Luke glanced at him. “They put me in a cell with you. That’s when I found out about your mind control.”

“Kilgrave says you have unbreakable skin,” said Jessica. “Is that true?”

In answer, Luke got up and opened a drawer, taking out a kitchen knife. He held out his left arm as the three of them watched, and sliced the tip of the blade down his arm from elbow to wrist. Jessica flinched, Kilgrave observed with a small smile, and Reva remained impassive. Luke put the knife down and Jessica leaned forward. He was right. The skin was completely intact. No blood, not a cut to be seen.

Well. That was something. Jessica looked at him. “And you’re strong too?”

“Yes.”

“How did you end up on the Raft in the first place?”

“It was my fault,” said Reva. “I… I made a deal.”

They were looking for someone with abilities, she told them. Someone to test on Kilgrave. They got in touch with Reva and all but threatened her into giving up Luke. It would only be temporary, they promised. After that Luke’s criminal record would be wiped clean and they wouldn’t bother her again.

“Sounds familiar,” Jessica muttered.

“Why did they need someone with abilities in particular?” Kilgrave asked.

“I don’t know,” said Reva. “That’s what they asked for.”

“It’s because they’d heard about me,” Jessica realised. “They knew I was immune, so they wanted to test if other gifted people would be immune too.”

Kilgrave glanced at her. “No wonder they couldn’t wait to get their hands on you.”

Hmm. Yeah, it made sense. Jessica bit her lip before turning back to Reva. “Who’s ‘they’? Who did you actually talk to?”

“My old boss,” said Reva. “Lieutenant General Thaddeus Ross.”

Jessica sucked in a sharp breath, sharing a glance with Kilgrave as they spoke simultaneously: “Ross…”

It was the name they’d heard in the video of the IGH laboratory. Luke looked startled too, and she wondered if this was news to him. Had his wife never told him about her previous life?

“Tell us more,” said Kilgrave. “When did you work for him?”

Reva nodded. “You remember the Harlem incident? The Hulk came in and tore up a big chunk of the city in a fight with another enhanced human. Ross is the reason Hulk exists. They were trying to create super-soldiers. Instead they created monsters. I was brought in to assess possible candidates for future experiments. I looked at their psychological profiles, their medical records… I would make recommendations based on who I thought could withstand the treatments.”

“Is that how you know Luke?” Jessica asked, curious.

Luke frowned, but remained silent as Reva answered. “Yes. I went on to work at Seagate Penitentiary where experiments were conducted on the prisoners. I also recommended suitable candidates for treatment. Luke was one of them.”

“So they experimented on you.” Maybe something in her expression softened because Luke’s eyes did too. They’d both had this inflicted on them. All three of them had. There was one thing she didn’t get though. “And then you fell in love?”

Luke’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” said Reva, her eyes turning wet as she looked at her husband. “I was going to tell you everything one day, I just didn’t…”

“Romantic drama later,” said Kilgrave, who surprisingly was more on point here than she was. “What’s your connection to Kozlov? To IGH?”

“I met Kozlov on the Raft,” said Reva. “He works for Ross, he was the one leading the experiments on you…”

“What was the point of all these experiments?” Jessica asked. “What are they actually trying to do?”

“I don’t know,” said Reva. “I can tell you that Ross was very invested in his super soldier program. He’d be looking for some kind of military application.”

Kilgrave gave her an “I told you so” look and Jessica shook her head, remembering something else. She dug the yellow flash drive out of her bag and set it down on the table in front of them. “Recognise this?”

Reva nodded. “I gave it to Albert and Louise Thompson.”

“Why?”

“Because I…” Reva sighed, her hands tightening around her coffee cup. “Because I wanted out. Because I wanted evidence against Ross and the people he worked with so they didn’t have power over me anymore. The line of work I was in… It’s hard to quit. After what happened with Luke at the Raft… I decided screw them, I wasn’t going to hold on to the evidence I’d collected anymore. I did some digging and found your parents. I wondered if they knew what had happened to their son.”

“So you’re the reason they found out what happened to me,” said Kilgrave softly.

“They were like me. People who had been involved in these… immoral experiments, people who wanted to make a better life for themselves. I guess I sympathised.”

Jessica sat back, drumming her fingers on the table. She wasn’t going to judge Reva for her past actions now; there was little point in that. And whatever revelations had happened between Reva and Luke as a result of this conversation they would have to hash out themselves. She was still no closer to finding Trish.

“Look,” she said. “We need your help. I have a friend, Trish Walker. She’s missing; we think Kozlov took her. They want Kilgrave back, and probably me. They want to keep going with their sick experiments. We’re going to stop them.”

Kilgrave leaned forward. “You said Kozlov reports to Ross. Could you help us get to him?”

It was a clever idea, she thought. If this Thaddeus Ross was ultimately the man in charge of the Raft, then he was the one Kilgrave needed to control. He could turn this around for both of them.

Reva looked unsure. “I… I have his contact details, if that’s what you want.”

Kilgrave smiled. “That’s a start.”

*

Luke and Reva had a small guest room where they’d dumped their things. Jessica left the couple to their own devices, figuring that they had their own shit to talk through. The only other thing Kilgrave had done was ask Reva if she had her own copy of the footage on the flash drive, to which the answer had been yes. He’d ordered her to destroy it. Jessica didn’t object. They had the flash drive; it was the leverage they needed.

As for now… She and Kilgrave were sitting on a too-small bed, their legs almost touching, while Jessica steeled herself to make that call.

“We have a plan,” Kilgrave reassured her. “It’ll be fine.”

God, she hoped so. He handed her the phone and Jessica punched in the number. One ring. Two rings. She licked dry lips when the line crackled, and a familiar voice spoke.

“Yes?”

“Kozlov, you son-of-a-bitch.”

“Jessica. You’re late.”

“I got held up looking for my friend. You know her. Trish Walker, talk show host, local celebrity. If she doesn’t turn up for work tomorrow, she’s going to be sorely missed.”

“You know who else is going to be sorely missed? Officer Will Simpson. His neck was snapped yesterday in my own home, so tell me why I shouldn’t hunt the two of you down like goddamn dogs.”

If he wanted to make her flinch, he didn’t succeed. Her voice hardened. “You’ll never find us if we don’t want to be found. But I have something you want. I have Kilgrave.” Her eyes flicked over to him. He was watching her, still and tense. “And I have the video evidence of IGH’s experiments.”

“And we have Trish. I believe she’s someone you want.”

“Yes.” She held her nerve. “I’m willing to make an exchange. Let Trish go and I’ll give you Kilgrave and the flash drive.”

“Deliver him by midnight back to the laboratory along with the evidence, and I promise Trish will be released by the morning.”

“That’s not good enough. I need to know you’ll let Trish go. Where is she?”

“I’m not about to tell you. You’ll have to take my word for it.”

“I want to see her. I want to know she’s safe.”

“You’re harbouring a fugitive, Jessica. You’re in no position to bargain.”

She gritted her teeth. He was being difficult, as expected. “Then we do a direct exchange. A public location in broad daylight. I’ll bring Kilgrave; you bring Trish. You pick where.”

There was a pause. She hoped that by letting him choose where to meet, he’d go for it, not suspecting a trap.

“Deal,” said Kozlov finally. “Midday tomorrow. I’ll send you the location.”

The call ended with a faint click and Jessica let out a breath. She was sweating, she realised, and her heart was racing. Kilgrave put his arm around her and for once she let him, welcoming the crisp feel of his shirt, his warmth, the scent of his aftershave.

“All done?” Kilgrave asked.

The location came through in a text message a few seconds later. Jessica showed him the screen. “Yeah.”

“Don’t know how I feel about being the bait,” he murmured. “Let’s hope this works.”

“Yeah,” she agreed.

He kissed her neck and she stilled, caught between the urge to flee and the desire to succumb. Unbidden, she thought of Luke and the blade running down his arm. No blood. No damage. She wouldn’t have to worry about hurting him. They could fight, or make love; they could wreck a building and come out unscathed.

Kilgrave’s hand slipped beneath her shirt and she squirmed. “They’ll hear us.”

“Let them.”

The walls were thin. She could hear a murmur of voices if she paid attention, Reva and Luke’s conversation in their room next door. They were married. She’d never have a life like theirs.

Kilgrave took hold of her jaw, turning her to face him. “Kiss me.”

He was greedy, always. He wanted and wanted and took and took. All her worries about Trish, about Kozlov, were at the forefront of her mind, but Kilgrave made her come back to the present. She focused on his eyes, lit by desire. She kissed him, and closed her eyes, and shut the rest of the world away.


	9. burn it to the ground

They met by the entrance to a playground in Central Park, Jessica sweating under the midday sun. She didn’t know how Kilgrave was coping in his suit. He’d said little on the way here and she didn’t know what to make of that, whether she ought to be nervous about him or their plan or whether Trish would be okay…

“He’s late,” said Kilgrave, looking at his watch.

He was pacing around and Jessica looked past him, trying to find something else to distract her. Luke was waiting for them on Fifth Avenue where he’d parked his motorcycle, ready to go at any moment. Trees obscured her line of sight but she tried not to look in his direction anyway. Didn’t want to give him away.

Kozlov had chosen the monument in front of her as their meeting place: a statue of three bears, the one in the middle standing up on its hind paws, the other two on all fours on either side. A park bench encircled the entire area so there was no shortage of places to sit, but she couldn’t stay still either. A mother pushed a pram around the edge of the platform and Jessica clenched her hands, watching until they turned out of sight.

She’d asked for a public location. It was both safer and more dangerous. Safer for them. Dangerous for civilians.

At six minutes past the hour, a familiar figure stepped into the park, a distinctive blonde head catching Jessica’s attention. Trish, alive and well and, as far as she could tell, intact. A burst of relief bubbled through her chest.

“Trish!”

Kilgrave turned, his lips pursed, but Jessica ignored him, hurrying over as Trish broke into a run. Trish threw her arms around Jessica and hugged her tight, the two of them embracing in the middle of the path.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Trish sounded breathless. Up close, her hair looked unwashed, pulled back into a messy ponytail, her complexion wan without make-up. Her suit pants and blouse were crinkled too, like she’d slept in her clothes. “You’d better sit down, we don’t have much time.”

“What do you mean?”

Trish took her arm and led her over to the nearest bench, Kilgrave following them. Her initial joy was already wearing off. Trish was alone. Kozlov was supposed to meet them here too – why wasn’t he here?

Kilgrave had the same question. “Trish,” he said, “tell us now: where’s Kozlov?”

“I don’t know,” said Trish at the same time as Jessica spoke over her: “You don’t have to control her.”

She glared up at Kilgrave, who waved a hand. “All right. Go on.”

“He sent me here alone,” said Trish, “but they’re waiting for you. There’s a van on the street nearby. We need to knock Kilgrave out and take him to the van in five minutes, or they’ll start shooting.”

She fumbled in her handbag and drew out what looked like a tranquiliser with a needle as long as Jessica’s thumb. Kilgrave’s eyes widened and he stepped back, shaking his head.

“No. This isn’t part of the plan. You’re not sticking that thing anywhere near me, Trish, not now, not ever.”

Trish gave a small nod, placing the dart in her lap. Jessica looked between them, her thoughts racing. They hadn’t anticipated this, he was right about that – she’d assumed that Kozlov would come in person, knowing that he was immune like Simpson was, but now that she thought about it Kozlov couldn’t be sure that his drug had worked. She’d killed Simpson before he could report back.

So there was only one way forward.

“Kilgrave,” she said quietly, standing up. “We have to do this. We can’t arouse suspicion.”  

“No,” he said.

She reached out to grab his arm and he shook her off. “We don’t have time to argue. Roll up your sleeve.”

“I said I’d be the bait, but not like this.” His gaze met hers, that same baleful look he’d given her the last time they’d taken a ride in a black van. “I want to be conscious.”

“They’re watching us,” said Trish. “They have to see him take the injection. Otherwise they’ll shoot us down.”

“Where are they?” Kilgrave asked, and it was a question on her lips too, Jessica looking around, every muscle tense.

Trish didn’t know. Snipers in the nearby buildings? Pedestrians in the park? Armed guards on the road? Wherever they were, they had to be out of Kilgrave’s range or at least go unnoticed. A couple were talking on the bench nearby, and there were other passers-by making their way to the playground or through the park, but none that stood out as suspicious.

“Look,” said Jessica, all too aware of the seconds ticking by, “you have to trust me, okay?”

She knew Kilgrave’s face well by now. Every little tic, every quirk of his lips or brows, the look in his eyes. His mouth was pinched tight.

“Trust you? Like every other time I’ve trusted you?”

“We’ll come for you, Kilgrave, I promise.” She took his hands, hating herself a little for doing this in public, in front of Trish, but she had to convince him. “We’ll get you out of there.”

He swallowed. She took a step closer, making herself meet his gaze head-on.

“All right,” he said finally. “I believe you. And if you don’t rescue me by sunset, Trish is going to kill herself.”

He looked at Trish and Jessica did too, automatic, but the rest of her had frozen.

_Trish is going to kill herself._

Trish blinked at them. Blank-faced.

“No,” she said, “no, don’t do that, take that back.”

She was still holding his hands. Kilgrave untangled them, rolling up his sleeve. She let go of him, and… God, she was so fucking stupid. Why was she surprised? It was like he’d winded her, again, and she hadn’t been lying to him, she fully intended to get him back, but now he’d left her with no choice.

“Please,” she tried. “You don’t have to do that.”

He was unmoved. “You promised to rescue me.”

“Yes.”

“So then there’s no problem, is there? Trish will be fine.”

She’d be fine, as long as they succeeded in getting Kilgrave out before sunset.

“We’ve got two minutes left,” Trish said, startling her. “We need to go, now.”

Fine. Yes. Too late now. Things were in motion, and like a detonator being set, it was too late to stop it. The clock had already started.

Jessica picked up the tranquiliser and stuck it into Kilgrave’s outstretched arm.

*

“If it helps,” said Trish, “the sun sets at twenty two minutes past eight tonight.”

“Thanks.”

Eight hours was a long time, all things considered. They’d hauled the unconscious Kilgrave over to the van, and Jessica had watched it leave. She’d also watched Luke follow on his motorcycle. Wherever that van went, Luke would tell them.

And while they waited for him to report back, she and Trish were catching up. They’d left the park and headed into the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, because she figured that no sniper could follow them in here. She bought them coffee while Trish scrolled through her long list of missed messages and calls.

“I think my producer wants to see me,” Trish said dryly.

Because she hadn’t turned up for work today. Jessica drummed her fingers on the table. “You should go.”

“I’m about to kill myself,” said Trish. “Do you really think I care about my job right now?”

“If it comes to that, I’ll stop you. You’re not dying on my watch.”

She could tie Trish up and stop her from hurting herself. It would be horrible, but they’d only have to make it through another few hours until his control wore off.

Trish sighed. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to rescue Kilgrave.”

“You don’t have to do that on my account.”

“No, I do.”

She told Trish about Luke and Reva. How they were out there helping Kilgrave. About the experiments, the confirmation that IGH was up to no good.

“Did you see anything?” Jessica asked. “What did Kozlov tell you?”

Not much, it turned out, but Trish did have useful information on Kozlov’s security. Five guards at the lab, Simpson’s squad, she said, and all of them pissed at his death. They’d taken the inoculation, as had Kozlov and his assistant. They’d also taken the other drug that Trish had mentioned, the one that enhanced performance.

Jessica frowned. “So that’s a different drug?”

“I saw them. They’re pills, red, white and blue. The red makes them stronger. White keeps them going, then they take the blue to calm them down. I guess it puts pressure on the heart or something. All that adrenaline.”

“And testosterone, probably,” she said, not liking the sound of that. “I killed Simpson. They’ll be pissed at me.”

“Jess,” Trish warned, looking around. “Don’t say that out in the open.”

Jessica shrugged. True, they were surrounded by people but the nearest group were a bunch of Chinese tourists and she figured that no one would hear her over the general chatter.

“I was going to take you home,” she said, “but now that you’re on suicide watch, I don’t think I can.”

“Good,” said Trish. “I wanna help.”

She knew Trish would say that. It was how they’d gotten into this mess and maybe at some point she would yell at Trish for being an idiot and sticking her nose in Jessica’s business, but now wasn’t the time.

She told Trish the plan. By the end of it, Trish was looking at her with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher. Sympathy? Worry?

“Okay, so once you’ve got Kilgrave, when you’ve gotten away, what happens then? Are you going to turn him in?”

She shifted irritably. “Not to anyone I don’t trust.”

“Is there someone you do trust?”

“Look, I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead. We have to get Kilgrave out and get him away from IGH. That’s all that matters.”

She was tense, worried that Trish was going to prod and poke further which was the last thing she needed. She barely had a plan for today, let alone tomorrow. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if they succeeded. She had to not fail first. Then they could worry about it.

To her relief, Trish dropped the subject.

“All right,” she said. “My life is in your hands.”

She didn’t much like that either.

*

If someone had told her when she’d first heard that Kilgrave had escaped that this would all culminate in trying to break him _out_ of prison, she’d have laughed in their face. No way. He was meant to be gone for good. He was meant to be out of her life for good.

Instead she was back at the facility and as she looked up at the derelict warehouse in broad daylight, she made out the sign above the entrance. Industrial Garments and Handling. IGH. It had been in front of her nose all along.

“You sure Kozlov is in there?” she asked, glancing over at Luke by her right shoulder.

“I saw him go in. I didn’t see him come out.”

“And the guards?” Trish asked on her left.

“Three of them dragged Kilgrave in there. Could be more. There’s a back entrance,” Luke added. “Reva’s got it covered.”

They’d come prepared. Luke kept a handgun underneath the till at his bar, just in case. Reva had it. If anyone ran out the back, she’d shoot them. Trish had changed into black pants and a tank top like she wore for her Krav Maga sessions and her face was covered by dark sunglasses. Didn’t want the general public recognising her. Jessica… Okay, Jessica hadn’t done anything special. All she could do was try to clear her mind and remember her goal.

They were busting in there head-on. Not subtle. But she didn’t have a better option. Chances of not being seen were low and IGH couldn’t threaten to kill or hurt Kilgrave because frankly that wouldn’t stop her.

“Okay,” said Jessica. “Let’s go.”

She broke cover, sprinting towards the entrance which was padlocked just as she remembered. Jessica broke the lock and kicked the door in, and then Luke’s broad hand settled on her shoulder.

“Stay behind me.”

She nodded. Luke strode in, Trish behind him and Jessica bringing up the rear. They’d cleaned the place up. No dust or cobwebs, no abandoned equipment. Nowhere to hide. The corridor was brightly lit and they hadn’t quite reached the lab where she and Kilgrave had woken up before a door to the left burst open and two guards ran out.

“Hands up!”

They had guns and Jessica instinctively froze, but Luke didn’t. He kept going, increasing his stride.

“Freeze! Stop right there or we’ll shoot!”

Jessica found her feet again, shoving Trish forward to catch up with Luke who wasn’t stopping. The guards fired; Trish shrieked, but Luke kept on going and Jessica swore she saw the bullets ricocheting off his large frame. One of the guards yelped as a bullet pinged off his helmet, and then Luke was on him, throwing a punch to his gut that sent the guard flying into the wall while the other raised his gun–

Trish was right behind Luke as instructed, using him as a human shield, and Jessica was ready to jump out and tackle the other guard when–

“ _Stop right there!_ ”

A disembodied voice, _his_ voice. Luke and Trish froze instantly, he with one hand braced against the wall ready to charge, and Trish half-crouched behind him, like someone had pressed pause in the middle of an action sequence. It might have been horrifically comical if they weren’t _being shot at_.

“Shit!”  

She dived forward to tackle the other guard and by sheer luck her fist knocked the gun out of his hand. He fell to the floor with Jessica on top of him and she wrenched off his helmet and hit him, once, twice, three times until blood spouted from his mouth and nose and his teeth were broken. The other guard was getting up – they didn’t have to obey, they were immune like she was – and she punched him in the face, his nose breaking with an audible crunch. He slumped back down.

Jessica stood up with bloody fists, breathing fast.

“ _Kill Jessica._ ”

The voice sounded odd, tinged with static, the words awkward and stilted as if someone had spliced them together. Where the fuck was it coming from?

“Kilgrave?” she called, looking around wildly.

But she couldn’t stop to think. Luke and Trish were on the move again and they were coming for _her_ , the murderous intent in their eyes filling her with a terror unlike anything she’d ever experienced.  

“Stop this!” She backed off, raising her hands. Fuck, she didn’t know what to do. “You don’t have to obey him!”

Luke grabbed her by the collar and flung her down the corridor with enough force for Jessica to crash through the door at the end, a spike of pain shooting through her spine with agonising intensity. Her ears rang. She groaned, struggling to get up, and in the corners of her flickering vision Trish was kneeling down by one of the fallen guards, picking up his gun…

Fuck.

She scrabbled to her feet as Luke advanced, as Trish raised the gun, and dived into the next room just in time. Shots rang out. Blood matted her hair, got into her eyes; she didn’t know where it had come from, whether it was hers or from one of the guards, but she pushed it back and dashed to the nearest desk to take shelter.

She was in a… lab? Office? Something in between. One thing caught her eye though: a gleaming glass cabinet, and on the shelf… Racks of test tubes. Pill bottles. Maybe there was something here that could help. She glanced back, swallowing the fear in her mouth when Luke’s silhouette shadowed the entrance, and darted over to the cabinet, smashing the glass without hesitation.

Red pills. She grabbed a bottle, then quickly scanned the rest of the shelf. A tiny vial of clear fluid, a label that said _KT antidote_. She grabbed that too, stuffing both inside her jacket, and then threw herself behind the desk again, peeping out as Luke strode into the room and Trish joined him, holding the gun. At least she had cover here. A couple of desks, work tables, filing cabinets.

They’d seen her: Luke made a beeline for her and Trish circled around to get a clear shot. Jessica pursed her lips. Fuck. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the desk chair next to her and hurled it at Trish, who pulled the trigger in panic but was too slow to dodge. It hit her and her friend went down with a cry.

Then Jessica burst out of cover and ran at Luke, throwing a punch that he caught. She gasped. Kilgrave hadn’t been kidding when he’d said that Luke was strong. They were locked in place, Jessica straining to hold her ground, Luke pressing forward with his added weight. She growled and found another reserve of strength from somewhere, pushing him back. She shifted her grip and lunged, swinging around to throw him off her – he crashed through one of the work tables, scattering lab equipment to the floor, and struck Trish a glancing blow as he landed.

They were both down for the count, if only temporarily, and Jessica took her chance. She ran for it. Out the door – she slammed it shut behind her – back to the corridor, and then she turned a corner and through a glass pane she saw him – Kilgrave – unconscious and strapped down to a gurney. Her knuckles were already bleeding. She might as well make them bleed more.

She smashed the window and a third armed guard turned the corner and ran at her, raising his gun. Jessica threw herself through into the lab, swearing as she landed in a pile of broken glass, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, she had to get to Kilgrave…

“Wake up!” She reached him, tore off the straps. “Kilgrave, goddammit! The one time I need you!”

He was unconscious and the guard had reached the open window, Jessica ducking behind the gurney.

“Come out with your hands up!”

She pulled Kilgrave off the gurney, sitting down with his prone form collapsed in her arms, his head lolling. Fumbling with her jacket, Jessica pulled out one of the bottles and unscrewed the lid. Red pill. She shoved the pill into his mouth and pressed her hand over it until he swallowed.

“Stand up or I’ll shoot!”

“Out of the way,” she heard Luke’s voice growl, and she knew without looking how that would end.

Shit. Shit. She shook Kilgrave’s shoulders, finding him still unresponsive.

“Kilgrave, I swear to God if you don’t wake up right now…”

More gunshots rang out and Jessica jumped, but they weren’t close by. Outside? What the hell was happening? She peered around the gurney, still holding Kilgrave, and flinched away as Trish fired another shot at her. Two, three shots, then her gun clicked empty.

Okay.

Leaving Kilgrave where he was, she got up, facing Trish and Luke again who had climbed into the lab after them. She was cornered. Trapped.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, mentally cataloguing her best course of action. “Don’t do this, fight it! That wasn’t his voice, it was a shitty recording. You don’t have to obey.”

“We have to kill you,” said Trish.

She wasn’t robotic so much as determined. Luke was the same, his hands curled into fists. He strode forward and she shoved the gurney at him, which he batted aside like it was nothing. Trish ran at her too and Jessica caught her, tried to hold her off, but she was stumbling back, Luke bearing down on them…

“Stop!”

She caught her breath. Luke and Trish froze, again, and Jessica stumbled away from them, her head spinning. That had been…

Kilgrave. The real Kilgrave. He was sitting up, staring at them. He looked sick and pale and bewildered, but he cocked his head at her and spoke in something like his usual tone.

“What the hell is going on?”

“We’re rescuing you,” she said. “There’s no time to explain. Tell them to come with us.”

She knelt down to help him up, Kilgrave ordered Luke and Trish as instructed, and somehow between the four of them they got out of the lab, Kilgrave glancing at the unconscious guard they passed along the way. They’d taken out three guards. Luke had reported three, but Trish had said there were five. And they still hadn’t found Kozlov.

“Back entrance is this way,” Luke said, and she turned to follow him, realising that she was limping.

Trish grabbed her shoulder. “Jess – God, are you okay? I’m so sorry.”

“Save it for later.”

No time. No fucking time. An exit sign flashed red in front of her and her head was pounding, Kilgrave and Trish on either side of her, helping her keep going. Was the door supposed to go blurry like that? She shook her head, making herself focus.

Luke got there first, storming out, and there was Reva, trembling with gun in hand and Jessica swallowed heavily as she caught sight of a pair of legs by the dumpster. She walked around to take a look. The fourth guard, shot dead.

Kilgrave growled, “Kozlov,” and she whipped around, seeing the doctor propped up by the wall, clutching his bleeding stomach. The fifth guard lay dead beside him.

All five guards accounted for, and they’d found Kozlov. Luke instantly went to Reva, wrapping his arms around her, and she clung to him, trembling. Trish licked her lips.

“Oh my God…”

“Got you,” said Kilgrave triumphantly. He turned to Jessica. “Is anyone else following us? Are we safe?”

“I… We left some of the guards unconscious inside.”

“What about the inoculation?”

“I saw it. Samples in the lab.”

He nodded. “Luke, go back inside and kill everyone you find, then burn the place down. I want that antidote completely destroyed.”

Luke gave a nod back and left his wife without another word, disappearing inside the facility. Reva’s cheeks were tearstained but she didn’t protest. Trish looked at her and Jessica blinked again. She was finding it hard to think straight. Should she be stopping this? Was there any point?

Meanwhile Kilgrave had recovered the colour in his cheeks and he dragged Kozlov upright by the scruff of his neck, sneering at him.

“All right, Doctor. Delighted we could meet again. Where’s your colleague, hmm? Doctor Malus? He’s the only one we still have to find.”

“You can’t control me,” said Kozlov steadily. “I won’t talk.”

It was impressive considering the blood leaking out of him. Even when Kilgrave grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him against the wall, he didn’t budge.

“That’s a shame,” Kilgrave breathed. “I was going to spare your wife. After all, she is innocent. But if you won’t talk…”

Rina? Something like static flashed across her line of vision, pain throbbing through her head. No… No, she had to draw the line somewhere. Jessica stepped forward, laying a hand on his shoulder, but Kilgrave shook her off, eyes blazing.

“Get off me, Jessica.”

“You’re not hurting Rina.” She kept her voice calm. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

Kozlov said nothing, struggling to breathe. A curl of smoke drifted through the open entrance and into the air, and the acrid smell reached her nostrils a second later. Luke had set the place on fire.

Kilgrave saw it too and shook his head, turning back to Kozlov. “Any last words?”

Kozlov’s gaze was clear. “You don’t scare me.”

“Bold,” said Kilgrave, raising his eyebrows. “I hope I never become so accepting of my own death. Life is so much more interesting, don’t you think? You stole a year of my life. Now I’m taking yours.” He stepped back and gestured at Reva. “Reva, you do the honours.” 

Reva stepped forward. Raised the gun. Trish’s hand gripped her arm and Jessica winced. She met Trish’s eyes, seeing the desperation there, and shook her head. No, she wasn’t going to stop this. They’d killed all the guards and they were burning the place down. It was too late to stop.

Reva shot Kozlov point-blank between the eyes.

*

You have a concussion, someone told her. Not to mention bloody hands. Ash in her hair. They’d taken a risk going to the hospital, but she remembered how it had gone last time with Kilgrave, how he’d wiped away the police officers’ suspicions with a few words, gotten her the best possible treatment, the doctors and nurses prioritising them over everyone else.

He’d taken her back to a hotel afterwards and she’d begged him not to do it, pleaded with whatever semblance of conscience he had…

She lay back on the hospital bed, her thoughts clouded with doubt and fear.

“I love you,” she’d whispered into his skin, but it was more than that, more than words, more than his flesh and her flesh. She really felt it, that rush of love, in the core of her being. Pleasure and adoration. She’d never been made love to like that.

“Jess, are you awake?”

A soft hand found hers. She opened her eyes.

“Trish…”

A different kind of love suffused her, softer, more protective, but full of worry and hurt too. Trish smiled at her. She looked tired and there was a bruise on her temple, but she was okay.

“Kilgrave’s gone. He said he’ll be back soon, but I thought you should know.”

She frowned. “Gone? Gone where?”

He’d almost had a seizure after taking that red pill. They’d had to take him to the emergency room, screaming for help. Trish’s injuries were minor in comparison, a few cuts and bruises. Jessica on the other hand had been told firmly that she needed to rest.

“Reva got in touch with Lieutenant General Ross. They’re going to meet. I think Kilgrave’s planning to intercept them.”

Jessica sighed, slumping back into the pillow. Right. The final part of the plan. The part that was meant to ensure the government would never come after Kilgrave again and that his mind control powers couldn’t be used by IGH or anyone else. She was meant to go with him, but he’d seized the opportunity to take matters into his own hands, as per usual.

“Kilgrave wins.”

Her own voice sounded hollow. This had been her idea too. Why did she feel so miserable?

“You saw what they were doing in there,” said Trish. “They had recordings of Kilgrave’s voice – they used it to control us. They had to be shut down.”

“Is that you talking, or Kilgrave?”

Trish paused, her eyes soft. “I guess you’ll find out in twelve hours.”

Something stirred in her at that. No, she thought. No, she wasn’t ever going to do that with Trish again. She tried to feel around her jacket and realised that she wasn’t wearing it.

“My jacket,” she said, gesturing over to where it was draped on a chair. “Look in the pocket.”

Trish gave her a curious look but complied, her eyes widening when she found the vial of clear liquid. She returned to her seat, Jessica sitting up.

“What do you think? Enough for one dose?”

“I guess so,” said Trish, reading the label. “I never actually saw them take it.”

“Take it. You should have it.”

Trish bit her lip. “I don’t know. If this is the only one left… Shouldn’t we analyse it, find a way to make more?”

“He’ll kill anyone else who takes it, you know that. Trish…” She took a shaky breath. “You asked me what I was going to do with Kilgrave after we got him out. Who I’d trust to lock him up. I don’t trust anyone, except us. You’re the only person I care about. If he can’t control you, he can’t control me either.”

“You mean…”

Jessica nodded. “Kilgrave stays with us.”


	10. it'll be our little secret

“Jessica.”

A calm, strong voice. Luke entered the ward, his T-shirt torn in places where the bullets had hit, but otherwise unscathed. He’d suffered a little from smoke inhalation, but nothing that should have kept him in the hospital this long. A doctor accompanied him, bland-faced and smiling.

“Ms Jones, Ms Walker, you’re free to go.” The doctor nodded at them. “I’m discharging you.”

She and Trish glanced at each other before getting up. Part of her was relieved. But there was still that last pit of dread in her stomach. Despite her best efforts, despite stopping IGH, she wasn’t in control. This wasn’t her victory.

“What’s going on?” Jessica asked. “Is it Kilgrave?”

Luke nodded. “I’ll take you to him.”

They left the hospital, Luke calling a taxi, and the journey that followed was deeply uncomfortable. Luke said nothing, staring out of the window. He hadn’t made eye contact with her once. Trish was quiet too, checking her phone. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and chewed her lip, a habit that Jessica recognised.

“Is something up?” she asked.

Trish looked up. “It’s fine. Nothing I can’t handle.”

She didn’t press the matter. Some things were best discussed in private.

To her surprise, the cab pulled up outside her apartment. Another pinch of fear made her tense up. She reached into her bag for her keys and rummaged around. Nope. He’d taken them.

_Birch Street. Main Street._

She took deep breaths before entering the apartment building. She’d meant to take him home anyway. What was the point of getting nervous about it?

Into the elevator.

_Higgins Drive._

Would he kill Reva? Ross? That hadn’t been the plan, but Kilgrave going off without her hadn’t been what they’d agreed either.

_Cobalt–_

“You okay?”

Trish interrupted her reverie, the elevator doors opening. Jessica nodded, adjusting her bag over her shoulder as they stepped out, Luke leading the way.

“Be ready to run if things go wrong,” she said. “I don’t want anyone else to die today.”

Trish nodded. “Okay.”

Last time she’d caught up with Kilgrave, she’d found two fresh bodies. Jessica licked dry lips, pushing that image out of her mind. The door to her apartment was at the end of the corridor. Luke reached it first but stood aside, waiting for her. She paused. Twisted the handle, opened it. Stepped inside, Trish following, but Luke didn’t move.

She frowned. “You’re not coming?”

“I can’t.”

His deep brown eyes bored into her and her stomach flipped. Right. Luke was doing this because he was under Kilgrave’s control. Kilgrave had his wife – they had his wife – and because of them he and Reva had killed people today. They could be charged with multiple accounts of murder, arson…

Jessica closed her eyes, turning away, and shut the door.

“Jessica?”

Kilgrave ambled over, relaxed, at ease, and she forced herself to face him. Trish stood at her shoulder, her fingers brushing Jessica’s arm, but she didn’t find the touch comforting.

“Together at last!” Kilgrave smiled at the pair at them. “Come in, there’s someone I want you to meet. Reva’s made dinner – stir-fry, I think, your cupboards were nearly bare. Join us.”

He gestured them to follow as he spoke and Jessica did so, her heart numb. Reva was alive. That was something. And sitting at the kitchen table… She’d seen this man in the fuzzy video footage from the IGH lab, but the quality had been bad. Up close, however, she knew exactly who it had to be. Lieutenant General Thaddeus Ross. He was grey-haired, with a darker moustache, sitting with his back straight and hands clasped in front of him. Dressed in a suit rather than any military uniform, but still, it was an incongruous sight.

Reva was setting out plates on the table. Jessica could smell the fried chicken and vegetables. Slowly, she scraped back a chair and took a seat. Trish glanced at her, then went over to help Reva with the food. Jessica almost told her to stop, but Kilgrave made no objection. Safer not to draw his attention.

“General Ross,” said Kilgrave, “meet Jessica Jones.”

“A pleasure,” said Ross gruffly, holding out his hand. “Kilgrave’s told me a lot about you.”

Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t shake his hand. “Like what?”

Kilgrave slid into the seat next to Ross, his tone airy. “That you and I are working together. Turns out Ross has quite a lot of experience with people like us.”

“Times are changing,” said Ross. “After what happened in Sokovia, the public are calling for people like you to be held accountable. They’re still cleaning up the mess over there. It’s time we got the situation under control.”

She stared at him. “That’s why you wanted to use Kilgrave’s power?”

They hadn’t done anything. Sokovia – she’d seen the news about it. The Avengers tearing shit up. Nothing to do with her. A lot of damage had been done and a lot of people were angry, but she’d been spared any vitriol because no one knew who she was.

Trish and Reva served the stir-fry. Reva stepped away and Trish shook her head, holding out the chair for her. “No, you take it.”

Right, she thought. There were only four places. Four plates. Reva hesitated, looking at Kilgrave, and Jessica forgot her questions as her anxiety spiked.

“It’s for you, Trish,” said Kilgrave. “Sit down. Reva, wash up.”

Trish opened her mouth to object and Jessica grabbed her hand, tugging her down. _Not yet!_ She didn’t want to reveal Trish’s immunity now, not when she had no idea what he was going to do with Ross and Reva.

Reluctantly, her friend sat down, but that didn’t stop her from shooting a mulish look at Kilgrave. “You’re going to make us eat and not Reva? She helped us, she’s not your slave.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Kilgrave, and Jessica had to grab her wrist under the table and squeeze it hard enough for Trish to breathe in sharply to stop her from retorting.

She was aware of Ross watching them. He might be under Kilgrave’s control but if they weren’t going to kill him then she’d rather he knew as little as possible. She didn’t want anyone carting Trish off to be experimented on. Reva had gone over to the sink and she could feel Trish silently fuming. She had to defuse the situation, and fast. 

“Kilgrave,” said Jessica loudly, standing up. “Can I have a word?”

He rolled his eyes but she moved off without him and to her relief, Kilgrave followed. They went into the bedroom, Jessica shutting the door behind them and then she folded her arms and fixed him with a pointed look.

“Is this about shutting up Patsy?” he asked. “Sorry, Trish. You have to admit she’s annoying. We’re in the middle of an important conversation here, and–”

“And you just can’t stop being a dick,” she interrupted him. “Why did you bring Ross here in the first place? This wasn’t part of the plan.”

He spread his hands. “I had an opportunity and I took it. Ross is high up. He’ll let us go, and then we won’t have to worry about being hunted by the government ever again.”

“Yeah, I’m sure seeing you order around Trish and Reva is gonna convince him! It’s not enough to make him let us go. He has to think you’re not a threat, or he’ll come after us as soon as your control wears off.”

“I’ve thought of that.”

“Oh, really?”

“He doesn’t give a shit about Reva. He just wants her to stay quiet and not reveal to the world that he’s been funding experiments on kids when the government is under pressure to do something about gifted people being out of control. That’s why he came running when she called. I can help him with that.”

A lump formed in her throat. “You are not killing Reva.”

His tone was flat. “Do you have a better idea?”

He was actually going to do it. He was going to kill her. Her throat twisted up and she paced around, panic moving her muscles without any sense of where to go. 

“Jesus Christ, if you kill Reva, Luke will come after you too! You can’t…” She stopped as she realised that Kilgrave had thought of that. He’d intended to dispose of them both. “You can’t use them like that and then get rid of them.”

Like they meant nothing – they were just tools, pawns that she’d used in her mission to rescue Kilgrave and save Trish.

“It was your idea to use them in the first place. They’re loose ends. I didn’t make it this far by not tying mine up.”

She tried to swallow but the lump wouldn’t go away. She’d been so fixated on her goal that she hadn’t thought through the consequences. She’d accepted the blood on her hands when it came to Kozlov and IGH. But Luke and Reva… That was different. They were innocent. Worse, she knew them. They’d been good to her, Luke in particular had been kind during the brief time she’d worked for him, and she’d already screwed them over.

“No,” she said, lifting her eyes to Kilgrave’s. “We can do this without killing them. Let Luke and Reva go, and I’ll convince them not to do anything stupid.”

She hadn’t turned the light on in the room and the blinds were closed, leaving only a chink of light around the edges illuminating Kilgrave in front of her. His face was in shadow, the sharp edges outlined. He closed the distance between them, taking her hand, and his voice was soft.

“What if you can’t?”

“Then we’ll do what needs to be done.” She squeezed his hand. “But we have to try first.”

A pause. His eyes were dark. Then he nodded, and Jessica let out the breath she’d been holding.

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Don’t be a dick to Trish.”

“As long as she’s nice to me,” he said, and that had to be enough.

Her anxiety was still through the roof, Jessica taking a moment to try and unclench her shoulders before following him back to the others. Kilgrave ordered Reva to wait outside with Luke – they’d deal with them later – and then they re-joined Ross and Trish, the food still steaming on the plates in front of them.

It didn’t take long for Ross to tell them everything. How they’d seen the potential of Kilgrave’s power. Wanted to see if they could harness it for themselves. IGH was the private company that Ross had hired to come in and conduct various trials, with the aim of replicating his mind control through voice recordings and an artificial version of Kilgrave’s airborne virus that made people vulnerable to his commands. He’d thought it had particular potential in hostage situations or for deescalating armed conflicts, which didn’t sound as horrible as Jessica had imagined, but it was still an unfair advantage that could be misused in the wrong hands. She wasn’t going to change her mind on that.

“Here’s my proposal,” said Kilgrave. “We keep your secrets, you keep ours. In return we can even offer our help once in a while – say, once a year. My mind control. Jessica’s strength. Whatever you need. You’re a man in a very privileged position, General. You could do great things. You could change the world. What do you say?”

Ross was frowning so hard his brows almost joined together. Jessica watched him, rapt, tense. She could live with Kilgrave’s offer, she thought, as long as Ross didn’t ask for anything too awful. Whatever would make these people go away.

“How do I know you won’t control me?” Ross asked. “Change the world in your image.”

“Oh, I have no interest in that,” said Kilgrave. “As far as I’m concerned the world is just fine as it is.”

Ross’s frown hadn’t disappeared. Maybe it was time she revealed her hand.

“I won’t let him,” she said, leaning forward. “If he gets any stupid ideas, I’ll smack him down. Kilgrave can’t control me. I’m your guarantee that he won’t cause any trouble.”

Kilgrave’s gaze flicked to her then, and she met his eyes, silent, determined. A long moment passed. This was the first step. If he could accept this…

“All right,” said Ross finally. “I accept your deal.”

“Then let’s shake on it,” said Kilgrave, standing up, and they did so. “I compelled him to tell the truth,” he added, “so I know we can trust him. Will you keep your word, General?”

A nod.

“No second thoughts about coming after me once you’re out of my control?”

Nope. Jessica’s shoulders sagged, and she looked over at Trish who was watching this whole situation play out with a troubled expression. Ross had made the right decision. If he’d resisted, he wouldn’t have made it out of the apartment and she’d have another body to deal with.

“Well, then,” said Kilgrave. “You’re free to go.”

As Ross departed, Jessica looked at Kilgrave and she didn’t have to say anything. He nodded.

“I’ll bring them in.”

*

Ross was gone. Trish had gone home too. And she’d persuaded Kilgrave to give her five minutes. Five minutes with Luke and Reva, five minutes to convince them to walk away. Kilgrave reiterated the order not to harm either of them, but apart from that they could do whatever they wanted.

Jessica watched, awkward and guilty, as Luke cradled Reva in his arms and she began sobbing into his chest. Kilgrave had left them alone but she had no doubt he would be back as soon as time was up. She cleared her throat.

“I wanted to say thank you…”

Luke looked up, and the sheer fury and hatred in his eyes shocked her to the core. 

“Thank you?” he repeated, incredulous. “Thank you? You used us. You took Reva and you made her into a killer. You stained our hands with the blood of your enemies.”

She stared at him. “We didn’t have a choice! We had to take IGH down.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “You had a choice. You could have given one to Reva and me.”

“Kilgrave, he–”

“Don’t hide behind Kilgrave. I saw you. The two of you were working together. You didn’t even give me the option to help you of my own free will.”

“There wasn’t any time.”

“Is that all you have? Excuses?”

Reva had stopped crying. She was staring at Jessica too, the two of them standing together, and God, she’d fucked this up so bad. She opened her mouth and closed it again, shame burning through her. She’d gone through so many excuses the first time she’d been with Kilgrave, told herself that it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t her fault, she had to do it, she had to…

She had to save Trish. She hadn’t even thought about anything else.

After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry. Trish was going to kill herself if I didn’t get Kilgrave out of there, but you’re right. That’s not an excuse.”

“You should kill him,” said Reva, surprising her with the clarity in her tone. “A man like that is too dangerous to keep alive. He won’t stop hurting people.”

“I have it under control,” she said, and surprised herself by keeping her voice steady. “You’re alive, you’re okay, and you won’t get in trouble from anything that happened today. You can walk away.”

“And we’re supposed to be grateful for that?” Luke asked. “Grateful that you’re letting us go?”

He wasn’t just looking at her with hatred, she thought. That was disgust in his eyes too.

“You can feel however you want,” she said. “I just don’t want any more trouble. Promise me that you’ll leave and we can put this whole thing behind us.”

Reva looked up at her husband, who snorted. “I trusted you. I thought you were a good person. When you worked for me, when I saw Kilgrave come in and the way he treated you… I thought something was going on. I wished I could have helped.”

Her throat tightened painfully. Luke helping her. For a while there her job at the bar had been a lifeline, the only thing she had outside of Kilgrave’s sphere of influence. Maybe if she’d talked to Luke, if she’d confided in him… Maybe she would have found the strength to break up with Kilgrave and none of this would have happened.

Instead she’d quit her job because Kilgrave had told her to, and he’d assumed complete control over her life.

She cleared her throat again, swallowing. “You couldn’t have helped. I’m not a good person, but I’m giving you one last chance to get the hell out.”

“No,” said Luke. “You’re not a good person. You’re a fucking piece of shit.”

Reva laid a hand on her husband’s arm to quell him, but it was too late. His words had cut through. She was trembling, she realised, and her eyes were wet. But she couldn’t deny it.

“What about you?” Reva asked. “When are you going to get out?”

 _Never_ , she thought. She’d believed once that she’d escaped. But the truth was that it didn’t matter whether Kilgrave was physically present. He was always with her, inside her. He was always…

“Time’s up!”

…here.

She looked away as Kilgrave walked in, sizing Luke and Reva up. “You can go now.”

Luke turned to step away, then paused, turning back to address her.

“Kilgrave is dangerous,” he said. “The two of you together, I don’t know what you’ll do but you’d better listen to one thing. Stay away from me and stay away from my wife.”

He walked off, Reva holding his hand, and she thought, _I’m never gonna see him again._

The one other person with abilities she knew. The one decent man she knew, and she’d screwed it up.

Tears welled up in her eyes. Without thinking, she wiped them away. 

*

It should have been like fucking the devil. Evil dripping out of every pore. But his skin was hot and slick with sweat and he panted an inch from her face and everything about him was so human and so close, their outward intimacy a mirror of what she felt looking into his eyes. She drowned in him.

He kissed down her neck and her breath hitched. He held her fast and she forgot, forgot about all the bodies except for his, plucking out every feeling from her. Good, bad. Desire, shame. Wanted, worthless. He finished a few seconds after she did, rolling over with a laugh on his lips.

“God. You are magnificent.”

A tremble ran through her. “Don’t tell Trish.”

“Of course not. This is our secret.”

Her secret. Like all the times she’d thought about Kilgrave in his absence, gotten herself off to his whispers in her ear, his ghostly touch on her skin. Like his voice in her head, the dreams, the hallucinations that hadn’t gone away. Like all the deaths weighing on her conscience, a thick, solid sheet of dirt that coated her and clung to her, that oozed like mud inside her. Trish knew some of it, but not the worst parts.

Not tonight, when she couldn’t see anything past her guilt, Luke’s hatred and disgust only a confirmation of what she had known to be true: she was a piece of shit. She’d drunk and cried and Kilgrave had held her, and the details were fuzzy after that but here she was in bed with him, and she’d let him fuck her, again, and in a way it was like drinking. Felt good at the time. Felt shit in the morning.

Kilgrave curled his arms around her and they slept.

*

She had breakfast with Trish in her favourite cafe at 10am, which was a curious time because it was when Trish was meant to be on-air.

“I’ve been fired,” said Trish, which explained that.

“Fired?”

Goddamn. How had that happened? Trish didn’t seem too cut up about it, shrugging her shoulders. She was well put together, dressed if as she was about to do her show, hair pulled back into a bun. Meanwhile, Jessica had showered until the water turned cold and then thrown on the ugliest, baggiest shirt she owned, leaving her hair a tangled mess. Trish Walker and her hobo sister. A few glances were thrown their way, but people were keeping their mouths shut. Good. She felt like she could punch someone.

Trish took a sip of her smoothie, some hideous blend of super food fruits. “I missed a couple of shows without warning them, and when they asked me to explain, I blew them off. They also said I’d been behaving erratically.”

She put the word ‘erratically’ in air quotes, rolling her eyes.

“Shit,” Jessica breathed. “Because of IGH? Jesus, you were kidnapped. They can’t fire you for that.”

“Well, they don’t know I was kidnapped, so yes they can. In hindsight it was a mistake to call the producer a misogynistic asshole, but he is an asshole and a misogynist, so.”

“This is my fault.”

“It wasn’t,” said Trish. “Honestly, I stopped caring. I abandoned my work to go look for IGH and I got far more of a thrill from that than anything I’ve done on the radio.”

“A thrill? You almost died!”

Trish had a strange definition of a thrill. This was all part of her wanting to play the hero, Jessica thought, the way she’d come back to investigate after Jessica had tried to send her away.

“But I was doing something meaningful,” said Trish. “I know it could have ended badly, but I don’t regret trying to help you.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that. Jessica picked at her porridge, looking down. She’d left Kilgrave a note before sneaking out this morning. At some point they’d have to talk about that, and at some point she’d have to go back and face him. She wasn’t looking forward to either. 

“Speaking of helping,” Trish said, breaking the silence after a minute or so, “I’m unemployed now until Mother interferes, so I’ve got a lot of free time. I can help you with Kilgrave.”

She looked up sharply. “No. He’s too dangerous.”

“You don’t have to deal with him on your own. I’m immune now too–”

“I made you immune so he can’t screw with you, not to help you screw with him.”

“If he’s always locked up, he’ll keep trying to escape. Maybe if we let him out once in a while, he’ll accept the situation.”

She snorted. “What, like taking a dog for a walk?”

“That’s not a bad way of thinking about it…”

“That’s how Kozlov thought and he’s dead.”

A leash, Kozlov had called it. She’d never felt less like the person holding the leash. She remembered Kilgrave on top of her the night before, the way he’d mouthed at her throat, and her cheeks flushed.

Trish gave a frustrated sigh. “Now you’re just being stubborn. What exactly are you planning to say to him?”

That was the question.

*

“Why is Trish here?” Kilgrave inquired.

He said it with a veneer of politeness, sitting opposite them at the kitchen table like they were interviewing him, but Jessica sensed his frustration. It was little things. A muscle twitching in his cheek. The half-glances he gave her, the disappointment in his face when she’d returned and he’d seen Trish come in after her.

“We have something to say to you,” said Jessica. “Two things, actually.”

“Oh,” he said. “Sounds serious.”

“I’ll start,” said Jessica. She’d fucking rehearsed this. “Remember the deal we made with Ross? I’m holding you to it. Enough people have died since you escaped from the Raft. No more. You keep a low profile, got it?”

“Okay?” Kilgrave looked between them. “Were you expecting me to object?”

“No, when I say a low profile, I mean a low profile. You don’t leave this apartment without my say-so. You don’t go anywhere without me and you don’t control anyone.”

He blinked. “I’m sorry, what? For a moment there it sounded like you were saying I’m still your prisoner.”

“That’s because you are,” said Jessica bluntly. “Trust goes both ways. You still have to earn it.”

She could pinpoint the second his eyes turned cold. A slight tilt of the head, a calculating look. He switched tactics smoothly, turning his attention to Trish.

“Trish, tell Jessica that she knows this went badly before. She couldn’t keep me prisoner for three days, let alone however long she’s proposing here.”

“How about I tell you to go fuck yourself,” said Trish, and she sounded breathless, almost thrilled to say it.

She really was immune. They hadn’t properly tested it and Jessica had worried that it might wear off, but no. Not yet at least. Jessica held back a smile. Kilgrave was staring at Trish like she’d grown another head.

“Yeah, that’s the second thing I was gonna tell you,” she said. “Trish took the inoculation, so she doesn’t have to do jack-shit. You can’t threaten her, asshole. And you’ll regret threatening me.”  

“Well,” said Kilgrave, “that’s certainly an interesting turn of events.”

He didn’t volunteer anything else, and she shot him an annoyed look. Stubborn to the end.

“I didn’t ask to babysit your ass,” she said. “Don’t make me regret it.”

She looked at Trish who shrugged, standing up. “I think he got the picture.”

Kilgrave watched them both as Jessica accompanied Trish on her way out. She could feel his gaze on her, could guess at what he was thinking. Her skin prickled uncomfortably. At the door, Trish pulled her into an impromptu hug.

“Be careful, okay? You don’t have to put this all on yourself. I’m here if it gets too much.”

Jessica tried to smile. It didn’t quite seem to fit her face. “You’re a better person than I am. I would’ve run away screaming.”

“I know it’s hard,” said Trish. “But you’re doing the right thing.”

Yeah. Doing the right thing, taking Kilgrave out of the hands of the authorities. Trying to avoid any more blood on her hands, as if there was any point with how stained they already were. Trying to do penance, if that were possible, by making him her responsibility.

Trish left, and Jessica walked slowly back into the apartment, back to Kilgrave who had emerged from the kitchen to wait for her.  

He smirked. “Think she bought it?”

He took her hands and Jessica let him, meeting his eyes. “I think she did.”


End file.
